


Kaleidoscopic

by timidphantom



Category: Trench - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: (Kindof) - Freeform, Acrophobia, DEMA (Twenty One Pilots), Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, I Am Sorry, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Memory Loss, Mild Gore, Mind Control, POV First Person, Songfic, and themes of depression mental illness etc, clancy is Tyler
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2020-11-08 17:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20839328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timidphantom/pseuds/timidphantom
Summary: A resident of Dema looks up and realizes that the city around her is still asleep. This year, she decides, she needs change of pace - but can she take the pace of change?  Unsure of her purpose, her worth, and herself, she must learn to accept the flaws of her world, to lean on others, and to love.





	1. we glorify those even more when they

Sun sets; sun rises. Along with every other thing within these grey walls it stays ever in routine. Seasons change from cold to colder, fires dim and controlled are lit in the street, then it comes back around once again. It happens without question - the simplest thing you could imagine - until 365 days of the year have passed and led you back to the very same place you’ve always been. At least, that’s what the people of Dema eventually accept as fact one way or another. And if they don’t…

Every other day of the year has us each separate in not only our lives, but in the territory in which we reside. But for one night of the year, the watchers turn a blind eye on the boundaries between districts and we gather with our Bishops under the light of their cold beacons and the faraway, full moon.

For every year I could recall, this night did not change. Nine Bishops would each take a turn, striking a shadow over the crowd as they confidently, with pride, listed the names and ages of people you would never meet. There would be a light for each one, dull, suffocated in glass, and year after year the Bishops would take a moment to look at the monument glowing with sickly light and they would nod.

It was the only night of the year which allowed for a great many things. The only night we were allowed and even encouraged to dance, sing, and cheer; the only true celebration Dema shared as a whole. Though the wiser in the crowd understood without words the spike in vulture sightings blotting out the sun in the days before the Glorification, still we cheered as it was the only time we were given to do so.

Maybe, I thought, that was human nature, as much as I saw human nature around me as hundreds of sets of eyes searched their outlying district’s inhabitants with hunger, seeking to find faces they had seen before, clamoring in unruly, normally shamed ways as they scrambled to trade words with those they had seen for many years past. Or, preparing to stare down that moment in which a name that sounds familiar rings down from that altar once the convocation officially began.

Each year was the same, foundationally speaking, but I was certain I detected a wordless air of disquiet in the crowd as clouds shrouded the moon and stars and left us half-blind under the neon monument which awaited the first Bishop’s appearance. We grew silent of our own accord as a few minutes ticked away past the scheduled 22:00 start time. To stray from schedule was not the way of Vialism nor our Bishops.

But before the unease could thicken much further, a flash of red caught the eye and from where we stood below we watched Keons emerge into the light, looking down on us with what I had very long mistaken for fondness. Warmth? Perhaps. But I was soon to learn that love never truly touched a Bishop’s eyes.

He spoke clearly down to us, explaining that they’d delayed the mere minutes they had only in hopes that the clouds would pass by, but that they would hold off no longer. As it always was with Keons, he appeared briefly and spoke softly, with poise. Three lights lit up the monument behind him in the end, and then he vanished off into the dark with the respectful murmurs of this district’s dwellers as his soundtrack.

Sacarver was second, and a fierce juxtaposition to Keons; the youngest and most convicted of the Nine by my reckoning, always greeted with woops and whistles scattered evenly around our gathering. Once silenced, we stood and waited until he had listed ten names, ten lights. Then he bowed, crimson robe catching light to send a stain across the crowd, and swiftly descended.

The routine of the convocation tended to become a blur after Sacarver departed, the crowd mingling as loudly as it dared to and welcoming their own Bishop to the podium when he arose.

And, eventually, Nico would appear and the monument would bleed light onto our faces before he stepped down and we would remark on his talent for speaking so swiftly and with a certain rhythm, saving us standing there until the sun rose as he spat out names that we would never hear again.

But tonight as Lisben climbed slowly, carefully, to the apex of the monument, I sensed something was amiss with my Bishop immediately. I had no words for what it was I felt as he stood in silence, but I was certain in that moment that this was not the man I had looked to all my life. 

In a voice that was not his own after a silence longer than most Bishops took to speak, he at last uttered two unthinkable, unspeakable, unholy words: “Denounce Vialism.”

The next few moments were chaos that I wasn’t entirely equipped to comprehend; I’ve had to play it back in my head a dozen times behind my eyelids for it to begin to make sense. First, the man upon the podium thrust the robe from his shoulders, unleashing a rain of golden petals that fell slowly like the first heavy, dizzying snowflakes of winter. 

By then the watchers were pushing to the stairs that led up behind the monument, but before they could take their first steps, a second figure emerged onto the narrow space and the wails and shouts from the crowd thinned out.

Though the unknown man held no means to project his voice, still his words rang out clearly as he turned to confront the Bishop that joined him. “How have you blinded these people into glorifying these names year after year, Nico?”

Nico stepped forward. The unknown man stepped back, teetering on the edge of the monument. As Nico reached forward, I sensed several thousand sets of eyes avert, but I couldn’t, or perhaps refused, to look away.

“No need. You’ll glorify me anyways.” His voice reached my ears once again and I watched, feeling somehow pulled from my body, as the unknown figure fell straight back inches away from Nico’s outstretched hands, his body surpassing the stray yellow petals that still fluttered in the air on his way to the ground.

I know logically that the next few minutes were but minutes, but they felt like a year to me as the watchers began to wade through the crowd to where the body had fallen while simultaneously beginning to usher the panicked, writhing droves away to their own districts, leaving every set of eyes busy. But not mine. Among it all I saw the flashes of yellow, the heat of true flame that we so rarely saw dancing in the crowd.

And again, in moments that felt like eons, I was among a very small few that lingered, lost. Part of me knew that the others would likely stand there until watchers came to guide them back to their districts themselves. As a lone watcher circled back for the first stragglers, I felt myself jerk out of my trance with unpleasant, jarring velocity and as they came close to me I grabbed their shoulders, unthinking.

“Lisben. Where is Lisben?” I pleaded to them, and they only looked back at me with unfeeling eyes before moving onto a person nearby who quietly followed them. Finally, not knowing what to do, I knelt down and swept together a handful of the fallen petals, surprised by how springy and fresh they felt in my hands. I had seen the flowers they belonged to before, inexplicably keeping vigil over the rooms of the Smeared in our housing complexes, but they quickly lost their color and were taken away. These felt almost alive, like they were freshly pulled from the soil, though I had never seen them growing.

Cupping my hands, I brought them up to my face and drew in the deepest breath I could manage. I had never smelled what wafted off them but found words easily enough: fire and earth, death and defiance, all tied in with a sweetness that pulled me up from the despair I’d felt seconds ago. 

“Are you alive down there?” A voice broke through to me and I jumped, scattering petals in all directions, and for some reason my instinct was to grab another handful and hold onto them, as if they were something I had to protect.

Pressing my petal filled hand to my chest, I rose to my feet and took in the stranger that had approached me. For her boldness I would have assumed she was one of Sacarver’s, but the softness in her eyes told me I should know her from childhood as one of my own. And during the confines of the Assemblage, I might have cared about any of that, but instead I looked down at the yellow band of tape around her ankle that blended with the petals underfoot.

“Lisben’s-” I began, but I couldn’t finish the sentence for the burning in my throat.

“Yours, I know,” she interrupted me out of mercy, her eyes looking around her immediate surroundings. “Don’t worry. Between you and me, he’s just enjoying the soundest sleep of his life.”

Without thinking, I pointed towards the podium. “And what about-?”

“Ah, Chrysanth. Don’t worry, you won’t be hearing his name at the next Assemblage.”

Suspended in that moment I realized that this was the first time in my life that someone who was not Lisben stood before me giving me answers for the things that were poisoning my head and threatening to leak from my eyes. I was inexplicably intoxicated by it.

“How do you know that?” I wondered, looking first at the petals in my hand, then at the tape around this stranger’s unusual green outfit. I had seen green before, occasionally, mainly on the Smeared and watchers, but my peers were given gray.

“They'll find no body, so no grave. No light.” With this she turned her eyes to look up at the monument that showed almost no flicker compared to how it normally looked by this time of the early morning. I counted twenty one and felt a strange twist in my stomach knowing Nico’s district would be aglow with at least that many on its own by this time. “And why should there be? Why do they continue to host this celebration?”

The man who’d stood on the monument impersonating my Bishop had asked a very similar question. I recoiled, my fist closing tightly enough around my precious winning of petals that I felt water begin to escape them. “Who are you?” I blurted, taking a firm step towards the other woman, blocking her view of the monument.

I had been so enraptured by her until that second that I had been blinded to the stirring in the shadows, and now I realized only as I was surrounded that it was too late to run. A dozen other figures, covered in yellow bands that seemed radiantly bright in the dark, were upon us in seconds and she stepped back into their throes, opening her hand to let a flourish of petals of her own fall to the cement.

“We’re no different than you, now.” And then she turned to leave, gently nudging one of her companions that sidled in close, saying something that I couldn’t catch. That I desperately wanted to catch.

“You did this,” I realized, involuntarily taking a step after the small group as it began to leave me behind. “You brought down the Assemblage.  _ You-!  _ all those people who never got to be recognized! You stole that from them!”

She swung around abruptly now, dark hair framing her face as severity took over her eyes, only for a second, before she drew a deep breath and straightened up. “All we did, my dear, is to give every person who saw what happened tonight some room for a new point of view. Maybe, just  _ maybe,  _ the Glorification is a bit different when you’re one of the people who loses, hm?”

“If you don’t want to be part of this, run along,” she continued, slipping back into fierceness as she stepped away from the two men flanking her to glare through me. “Run home to your Bishop, surrender to his hands, and go back to your cage. None of  _ his _ have ever realized that all this is just a lesson we’ve needed to unlearn this entire time. I thought for a moment when I saw you that you might be an exception. But maybe next Smear.”

“Winter, we don’t have time for this one,” the man that had stood next to her moments ago mumbled from behind the yellow bandana covering his nose and mouth. His eyes, almost black in the dark, looked over me with what I recognized as pity. “Watchers won’t be sidetracked long, looking for Lisben and the body. If we wanna get out, we gotta go now. The other group already escaped.”

The stranger I now knew to be named Winter turned away from me to look up at the man who’d spoken, running a hand through her hair and dislodging a petal that was still stuck in it. She then looked at the other man who’d flanked her, conflicted. “Chrysanth, this is your show. Call it.” She said to him simply, waving a hand towards me as if I was some chore left undone.

Her dismissal ignited something in me that carried a feeling like the smell burnt into my hands from the petals and I strode forward, addressing “Chrysanth” before he had the chance to speak on my fate. Opening my hand, I held the crumpled petals out to him. 

“Tell me who you are. Tell me where you got these.”

I realized abruptly by the bundled red fabric in this man's arms that he had been the man who'd "fallen" from the podium, but had no time to demand answers as Chrysanth paused a beat, looking over my head and pursing his lips. I knew by the flicker of alarm in his eyes that he had seen something behind me, but I refused to look away, as if my life depended on this answer. Suddenly, he pointed to Winter, then to me, roughly answering back, “if you want to know, we’ll explain on the way. Otherwise go back home and go back to sleep.”

The cold light of watchers lit up the pavement at my feet and the group before me turned as one, the man with the bandana covering his face taking a spot at the front. In an instant I knew that my decision was already made. I’d had my share of silence.

Time to wake up.


	2. pressures of a new place

The speed at which I fell into the unknown was by far what frightened me most. I had followed a long and well-trodden path up until this point - a path that was predictable and well lit. Visibility was clear. But it seemed the exact second I fell off of it, it immediately turned out that the world was nothing like anything I’d believed it to be, and I was stumbling through the dark with no signs to point the way.

Literally.

The watchers didn’t pursue us long past when we passed through the gate to Keons’ district, and though it was my first time to leave my own district - many only saw their own in their entire lifetime - I had very little time to take it in before Winter grabbed onto my arm and pulled me into a narrow space between two buildings, cutting off my view of the huge stone chapel down the street. Lisben had one like it, but… quainter. 

Then, one by one before my eyes, the ragged group in front of me began to vanish into a crevice at the end of the alley. It looked a bit like a crack that would open up in the pavement after it froze solid, except large enough to swallow people whole.

It came down to Winter, Chrysanth and I before I knew it and the man gave Winter a very deliberate look before jumping down into the dark, not seeming to make a sound as he hit the ground. I hoped it meant it wasn’t a long drop, rather than the opposite.

“Well? Take your last look at Dema,” Winter prompted me, and I felt a sudden jolt in my stomach, as if it hadn’t occurred to me until that second just what I had gotten myself into. It must have showed outwardly, as Winter’s brow furrowed and she took a delicate step towards me. “Or, you can still go back. It’s not too late for that.”

The night seemed to have grown colder the further I strayed from the abandoned grounds of the Glorified, and now it seemed keen to freeze my feet to the ground. Part of me expected to hear a call from down below, hurrying Winter along, but it seemed she lived in a world that had no plans for her. 

Was I prepared for that?

Winter turned away from me after what had to be a couple minutes, looking down into the jagged, unknown pit that waited. “You should go ahead of me so I can make sure you get to the bottom safely,” she said at last, decisively. 

The gentle words unexpectedly felt like an electric shock and I stumbled forward to her side, looking down into the crevice. There was a small lip in the wall about my body’s length down, then the sickly neon glow from the main road’s streetlamps reached no farther.

Slowly, I knelt down and dangled my legs over, waving my feet through the air as I blindly looked for purchase. But I’d known just by looking that to descend after the others, I would have to make a drop into the unknown. It was too late to scramble back up, dignityless, now - even if my mind wasn’t set. I let my grip slip and landed on my tip toes on the foothold that felt even narrower than it looked and then turned, gazing unseeing into the dark.

No one was there to tell me what lay below; no certain Bishop’s words to reassure me that what I was doing was right - and I knew that this wasn’t right, but every part of me seemed to scream of its necessity. I drew a deep breath and gave myself a thorough shake as if I could scatter my fears and stepped forward into nothing.

The ground came somehow both sooner and later than I’d expected and my knees buckled, dropping me on all fours onto hard, rugged stone. In the tiny crescent of feeble light that shone from above, I could see my hands were scraped, bloody and gritty, and they burned like holding them close to a heater after hours out in the cold. Swallowing hard, I stood up and pressed my palms into my thighs, hissing through my teeth.

My eyes began to adjust to the newfound darkness, and by the time Winter landed beside me with poise that told me she had done this before, I was able to make out a darker, seemingly endless slanted opening only a few paces from the solid ground I’d landed on.

Saying nothing to me, Winter started off down the dark path; only out of fear of being abandoned in this dark place did I follow, uncertainty of the total blindness that engulfed me making it impossible to hold my breath steady. I panted raggedly, heart thumping in my chest, as I followed just behind the sound of Winter’s own footsteps. I had been putting one foot in front of the other so simply my entire life, yet all of a sudden every stride was a challenge, panic beating in my chest like wings flapping frantically.

It could’ve been two minutes or twenty - it felt like an eon - but at long last the slope started to change, eventually becoming an incline, instead. Around the same time, the darkness and dreadful silence bean to break up and I realized we were beginning to catch up with the group that had gone ahead of us.

As we neared the rear of the group, which seemed to shuffle slower, tiredly, now, I found myself hanging back warily, half-blinded by the dancing light from the torches they held aloft. I had never seen such free, raging fire before, so robust that it hurt to look directly at. Blinking against the images of flames burnt into my eyelids, I looked down to my feet and shuffled closer to Winter.

“Couldn’t have waited up?” I heard her scoff to someone near the back of the group. “You know I’ve got no torch.”

Nobody answered her, and they soon kept walking, single file, heads down. Unruffled, Winter fell in line. Exhaustion began to drag at me as the sweat pulled out of me from the long uphill trek began to grow cold, and my feet threatened to stumble. Clenching my jaw, I hugged my arms around myself. There was nothing to do but go on.

The farther we walked, the more the tunnel we followed began to widen out, until it was vast enough that I couldn’t see any walls but the one we followed, and the ceiling stretched away into the darkness. From somewhere nearby, I could hear a soft trickle of water, and a biting, fresh draft of air touched the back of my neck, sending a shiver through me.

“What is this place?” I wondered aloud, unsure if anyone would stop to answer me. Unexpectedly, the man at the head of the group halted, forcing everyone behind him to stop as well, though rather than looking at me their attention turned to the wall of the cavern beside us.

There lay a drawing of a torch strewn across the stone, with words I couldn’t quite make out scrawled above the image, over my head. As I craned my neck back to read better, the man with the bandanna abandoned his spot at the head of the group to stand beside me, raising his torch higher to shed light on the two words.

“Cover me,” I said aloud, then tipped my head, looking from the torch in the man’s hand, back to the picture. “Cover from what? With what?” I mused, not particularly surprised when the rest of the group moved on, though it did catch me off guard when the man with the torch hung back along with Winter, keeping pace with me as I finally meandered along the same path, stopping once more as I came upon another image.

It was round with weaving lines, almost like a wicker basket, but far more esoteric and unidentifiable. The words above, “East is up,” somehow made even less sense. Yet the longer I stared at it, the more familiar it looked. I was certain I’d seen it before, in passing, somehow. 

Finally, I found my eyes picking out a very subtle tick in the line furthest to the left, like a marker that was only meant to be seen if someone was searching for it. “Is this where we are?” I asked at last, cautiously, though fairly certain by now that what I stood before was some sort of map.

“That’s right,” Winter agreed, stoic. Then she turned and moved on, the thus far rather silent man following after. Not wanting to be left behind in the dark, I scrambled behind him on heavy legs that were pleading with me to surrender by now. 

My two companions didn’t slow down for me again, though I could see countless other markings left on the cave walls. The fleeting glances left them all a blur of unfamiliar red, yellow and blue lines in the back of my mind. 

We never caught up with the other ten or so group members that had gone on without us, but as the dark of the cavern began to loosen its grip, I heard the sound of a small gathering up ahead.

Sure enough, as we rounded the corner, I was greeted by the paling night sky and a stretch of clear, flat land that danced with the light of dim and dying fires for as far as I could see. If I had thought the group I had left with was large, this gathering made them look like nothing.

“Come on, keep moving,” Winter said softly close to my ear, pressing her hand into my lower back to try to guide me onward.

“How can there be so many people out here?” I whispered, hoarsely. “ _ All  _ these people…” my words echoed back to me and their uselessness occured to me soon after. “Lisben… Lisben said nobody who leaves Dema survives. How could all these people come out here just to die?”

Winter caressed her hand up and down my back gently, a motion that might have given me butterflies at a time when any part of me was settled in the first place. But at present, I had no computing power left to respond to it.

A light burnt out somewhere in my mind and my knees locked, suddenly refusing to move a step further. Holding onto the loose fabric at my shirt’s stomach, I let my teeth start to chatter in the cold, my frame starting to rattle until I couldn’t quite stay upright and I sank until I was kneeling, cocooning myself in my arms. 

Part of me knew people around me were starting to gather around and stare - the last thing I wanted at a time like this. I wanted to fall into the cracks in the stone around me; I wanted to disappear, or be carried away by a swarm of vultures in a hundred bloody pieces, or-

The sound of a firm  _ whap  _ and the sensation of a hand smacking against my shoulder knocked the fog clear out of my mind and I jerked my head back to look up first at the kind, hazel-brown eyes of the man standing over me. I’d already overheard his name - Chrysanth? 

His hand pressed on my shoulder again and I instinctively craned my neck to look at the strip of yellow tape he’d pressed onto my shirt. 

“What’s your name, friend?” He asked me at a secretive volume, ripping another strip of tape off the roll in his hand and slapping it onto my other shoulder, knocking another ounce of panic out of me.

“Elysia,” I rasped, forcing myself to my feet and stomping on the stone underfoot to try to force some circulation back down into my numb, tingling toes.

“Elysia,” he repeated to me, tilting his head. Raising his voice slightly, he waved a hand to the people around us. “Okay. Great. We were all Elysia once.”

I had to turn his words over in my head a few times before they made sense; he was trying to tell me that everyone who stood around me had felt what I was feeling in this moment. Hesitantly, I allowed my attention to range out to the small gathering of silent spectators. Many of their expressions, I realized, were that of sympathy, understanding. And though some were unreadable, none were unkind.

My lungs let me breathe. I swallowed hard, nodding, then managed to utter a croaky “thank-you” to the man beside me.

“Hey, no worries. The hardest part is over - you took that leap,” he reassured me in a slightly broken murmur that I was unsure was the product of emotion or simply his manner of speaking. “You good now? You okay?” He ventured a moment later, and I forced myself to nod simply because, for the moment, this was as “okay” as I would get.

He gave me another little pat and passed the roll of tape in his hand off to Winter before heading off through the small drove of people to meet up with the man whose face had been covered with a bandanna until now, alongside - wait.

“I thought that  _ was  _ Chrysanth,” I muttered out of the corner of my mouth to Winter, pointing to the trio that stood a little ways off compromised by who I could only refer to as Bandanna Man, Chryanth, and the man who’d just pulled me up from the ground. From this distance, he was indiscernible from Chrysanth, the only difference being the different placement of yellow tape on their clothing.

Winter laughed softly, shaking her head, then put her hand on my back to guide me away once again. “If you ever figure out how to get Chrysanth to be that nice to you, feel free to share,” she joked, then gave me a sympathetic look. “They’re brothers - the sooner you learn to tell them apart, the better. They’re basically night and day - the one who was just over here, that was Clancy.”

“Twins?” I mused, frowning. “I’ve never met someone with a twin. Of all the places, I run into some here?”

Winter nodded, smiling cooly as I allowed her to lead me away at last. Eventually, we reached a small grouping of tents and stopped; she sat next to a dying fire and tossed a few dry, gnarled branches that crackled fiercely onto it. Though hesitant to get any closer to the fire as it came back to life with dancing vibrancy, desperation to chase the cold out pushed me closer and a longing to let my legs rest told me to sit.

Neither of us spoke for awhile - I wasn’t sure if there was anything to say - so I instead focused on carefully picking pieces of gravel out of my scraped palms. Eventually, Winter produced a tin of almonds from somewhere and offered me a handful, which I happily took. Then, finally, the silence broke.

“You really have  _ literally _ no idea who we are, do you?”

I half-choked on the last almond I had, finding I could only look at Winter with a foolish, stunned expression akin to an owl’s. “Am - am I supposed to?” 

Rather than answering right away, Winter pursed her lips, troubled. “Chrysanth will not be happy when he finds out,” she said at last, carefully. 

“What, is he like the Bishop around here?” I asked in what I thought was a sarcastic enough voice, but Winter merely returned a fierce look, sneering at me.

“We don’t talk about  _ them  _ like that around here,” she hissed, then took a deep breath. “That’d be a huge insult, actually. No one is  _ like a Bishop  _ around here. Nobody rules anybody. Nobody puts blinders on anybody. There’s no walls.”

Defensively, I fixed Winter with a steady look, gesturing around myself. “A Bishop would never leave anyone to sleep out on the freezing cold ground, either. I  _ knew  _ there’s no Bishops. I just meant: is Crysanth kinda sorta… in charge?”

For a moment Winter simply looked so extremely taken back by my response that I started going through my words in my head to make sure they’d been coherent, but when she suddenly took a deep breath and began to massage her temples, I leaned away slightly.

“Damn, he’s going to  _ kill _ me for bringing you back here,” she muttered to herself, and I felt a small pulse of panic in my chest. She was surely exaggerating, but nonetheless I didn’t want anything even mildly bad to happen to her due to me. “Okay. Sure. We’ll say Chrysanth and Clancy are in charge. Well, and Atlas.”

“Who?”

“The other guy who was with them before we left.”

“Oh, Bandanna Man.”

The tension in Winter’s face disappeared at this and she laughed quietly, nodding her head. “Yes, yes. Bandanna Man. We go way back, which is why everyone let me bring you along in the first place. Otherwise I think you’d still be standing like a statue back at the Glorification.”

Humiliation caught me off guard and I picked at the tape on my shoulder with my fingernails. “I guess I looked pretty stupid,” I muttered, staring into the fire that was beginning to go down again already. “I probably still do. You’re right. I have no idea where I am right now, or who any of you are. You look the same as everyone I’ve ever known, but completely different, and you live out here in a place Bishops have told me no one can possibly survive. And you all look...  _ happier _ than I do. So, the question couldn’t  _ just  _ be whether or not I know you, it ought to be whether or not I know  _ anything. _ ”

Tears were burning in my eyes by the end of my tangent and I tried to blink them away but instead they flowed over, and I tried to dry my cheeks as quickly as possible. Instead of saying anything, Winter offered me the tin of almonds again. I took another handful and piled them into my mouth so that I didn’t have any breath to cry between my chewing; Winter looked on, perplexed. 

“You’re exhausted,” she said at last, after I had settled. “That’s not helping you think, or helping anything. Let’s get you a few hours of rest before we worry about anything else, okay?” Clenching her jaw against a yawn, Winter shook her head firmly. 

“I’m not that tired,” I muttered, despite the fact that after finding some warmth and calories I was barely able to remain sitting upright. “I’m not going to be able to sleep on the fricking ground anyways.”

“Well, that’s your single option. Welcome to Trench,” Winter muttered to me, standing and pulling off her boots before crawling on all fours into the tent directly across the fire from me. Briefly, I glanced around at the other occupied tents, and the couple other nearby huddled figures, before Winter lifted a hand and waved me over from where she lay. Flustered, I followed suit and removed my shoes, then crawled into the shelter next to her. 

And for all my whining, the hard ground and scratchy bedding around me felt like a dream somehow and, with the warmth of someone beside me for the first time since I’d been young enough to claim nightmares and crawl into bed with my mother, all the concerns in my mind quickly quieted and I drifted off to peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> youve heard of josh isn't real now get ready for there are two tylers  
yes they all have changed names


	3. it's time you pick your battle and i promise you this is mine

When I first opened my eyes back in my room in Dema I was initially prepared to accept that everything that had happened the night before was a strange, vivid and unforeseen dream. The routine of my life took hold and I kept myself occupied as we had been taught, rising from bed and changing into clean clothing, drawing water to wash my nightclothes and hanging them out to dry; a task we’d been given at a young age, something meant to be done before our first meal of the day. 

Then, after we’d eaten we’d set about whatever assigned tasks we had, and before we knew it, the sun would pass overhead and dip low, and it would be time to have our late meal, change into our dry night clothes, and fall back asleep. A perfectly predictable cycle, one that began to taste bitter the more you thought about it.

So we didn’t think. Those were the choices we were given; mull and allow it to poison us, or instead follow our instructions flawlessly and keep our minds empty, asleep. When exactly I had begun to realize the inherent brokenness of Dema was only a vague, confused, and half-realized recollection, but it had crept up on me nonetheless.

Normally, the day following the Assemblage was a day of rest for all citizens; a day for reflection and remembrance of the Glorified, along with a mandatory midday mass with the district’s corresponding Bishop. However, the longer I tried to think about the Glorification - and Lisben - the more a curious panic began to come across me. Inevitably it came back to me that we’d been given no names that were meant to resonate in our minds; that the Glorification had been no celebration at all.

That maybe… maybe it never had been.

Where was my mind going? My thoughts didn’t sound like my own. To escape it and the fears roiling in the dark corners of my mind, I stumbled from my home out into the street and beelined to the chapel; others would be there early and I could flee into their idle chatter, crush my own silence with it all. But as I arrived, it occured to me that I hadn’t seen a soul on the way and even its outskirts were deserted. Thoughtlessly, I made my way inside, because  _ certainly  _ if no one was around, I was late and everyone was already gathered within.

The stone interior of the chapel was even darker than usual without the lights along the aisle within aglow, and as I walked numbly down the dark centre aisle knowing exactly where to place my feet, I realized that until this point I had not  _ chosen  _ to do any of this; I had merely followed along with my body as it carried me from place to place. 

But now, I stopped at the bottom of the first step and forced myself to remain there as Lisben circled around from behind his glowing light fixture, red robe sweeping along the floor, his hands steepled in front of his chest, steeped in black for the upcoming rites.

“Do you know what happens to a bird with no wings should it try to fly, my child?” He asked me with the usual softness present in his voice, not looking directly at me. “Even plummeting to their demise, they sing the most beautiful of songs. It is a sound that my brothers cannot bear to hear; such a vain and final glory can not possibly sound beautiful to them.”

“And you, Lisben?” I asked carefully, knowing it was what he was leading me to ask.

He nodded slightly, approving of my playing along, but turned away slightly, downcast. I had always known my Bishop to be melancholic at times, and a man of few words, but I had never seen him quite so weighted; guilty, even.

“I fear I find myself simply proud to hear them sing a song of jubilation at all,” he answered at last, heavily. As he spoke, he crossed slowly to his altar and I watched as he dragged his fingertips through the bowl waiting there. When he turned towards me, I found myself physically resisting the urge to step closer to him.

“Come forward, my child,” he told me softly, gently. With no anticipation that I would refuse.

And why would I? Everyday I had been told of his limitless mercy, of the harshness of the other Bishops - shown it annually as their citizens passed into memory. All my life, I had been taught that Lisben would never move to harm or take away from any of us unless we truly deserved it; and even then he did so with a heavy heart, loving us in spite of our transgressions.

So why, when he took a step towards me, did I take a step back instinctively? Upon seeing his expression darken a shade from behind his veil, my heart began to race uncontrollably in my chest, but whatever escalation I feared never came and he instead simply turned away, nodding to himself.

“I understand, child. You are confused. You haven’t yet decided which side of this battle you stand on - all you know is that you have a role and you must fulfill it.” Lisben’s voice was ever calm, full of acceptance that I found I dreaded more than any rage or resentment that surely lived somewhere inside of him.

“We all must decide what we believe eventually. Remember, however, that it is not a simple task, nor one you do but once.” He spoke again after a long moment and I realized the words were something of a farewell. 

Confused, I tilted my head. Though I had never claimed to know Lisben or understand his reasonings, his simple surrender was the most perplexing of it all - like he was little more than a weight attached to me, powerless as I cut him away. Even though I knew it was what he  _ wanted  _ me to feel, I couldn’t ignore my guilt. He had never harmed me; how could I be so cruel to him in turn? 

I very nearly stepped up the stairs towards him, my feet shifting seemingly of their own accord as they had all throughout what I had at last realized was an uncannily vivid and lucid dream. 

Either way, I realized, my Bishop would get what he wanted - power over me and the way I felt. But if I turned away and ran, somewhere along that crooked dark path was a way out. And so I fled from the Chapel, fled from Lisben’s sorrowful stare.

As I shoved open the weighty door, momentum kept me stumbling forward until I teetered on an edge above a massive drop into the stone wasteland below - I had emerged not into my district, but instead onto the crest of a wall - or, perhaps, a tower. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t step back and regain my footing. Vulture’s screeches became the only soundtrack to my nightmare as my balance was lost to the void and I plummeted.

I awoke with the startle of my soul being knocked back into my body with the force of a bat ramming into my chest, sitting upright with a jolt and crushing down a scream that wanted to escape me.

Awake now - and very aware that I was - reality came back to me with vivid clarity, a simple understanding of the “leap” I’d taken returning to me alongside awareness of my sore legs from how far I’d stumbled across uneven stone in the dark. Not to mention, a knot in my back from sleeping on the hard ground. 

“Winter?” I rasped, though I could already see she was neither beside me in the tent any longer nor huddled around the firepit in full view of the tent’s opening. Unsure what else to do, I crawled out of my shelter and stood, looking around. Compared to the gathering last night, the stone outcropping looked positively barren, most of the tents now nowhere to be found, fires extinguished and abandoned. 

With broad daylight beating down, I had to squint against the sun to identify Winter among the small handful of people remaining at this so-called settlement. Steeling myself, I strode over to where she sat with her group of three men I was already acquainted with, and a woman I didn’t remember seeing previously. 

She was not the type of person I would have expected to see out here; fair and stunning, with wide, pale blue eyes. Seeing her, I lost my nerve to approach and simply hung back, waiting to be noticed. To my slight dismay, Bandanna Man - er, Atlas - noticed me first and waved me over. Trying my hardest to look as though I remotely belonged, I slunk over.

Chrysanth watched my approach with a flinty stare before rather dramatically rolling his eyes; I pretended to have no reaction, standing rather close to where Winter sat on a log as a makeshift stool. 

“Whoa there, you look kind of pale,” Winter observed unhelpfully after a beat of silence. “Sleeping on the ground not agree with you?” I knew she was teasing me for my remarks on these living conditions the night before, but I couldn’t bring myself to retaliate, not even humorously. 

Instead, I found myself asking, quietly, “where’d everyone go?” At the question, Chrysanth, Clancy and Atlas exchanged a triangle of inscrutable glances before Clancy lightly swatted the blonde woman’s shoulder and leaned closer to her.

“C’mon, let’s give them some space,” he said lowly to her, and they departed together, leaving me under Chrysanth’s stare. Inevitably, I realized that Winter had mentioned something about him not being “happy” with my presence. He was making no effort to disguise that, either.

“Vultures,” he said suddenly, waving his index finger through the air in a circular motion, the very same that the birds flew above in. “They tend to… congregate above, during the day, if we gather. Leading watchers right to us.” He paused briefly, giving me yet another cold glare. “Or worse, Keons, looking for his latest lost lamb.”

I glanced at Winter, opening my mouth to correct him but immediately thinking better of it. “Right… vultures equals Bishops equals bad,” I agreed slowly, carefully. Then, I looked around once again. “Did they… go back to Dema?”

Chrysanth cringed slightly at the city’s name, but it passed so quickly that I couldn’t be sure I had seen it, but surely wasn’t  _ meant  _ to. Then he shrugged. “Some that have easy ways in and out, maybe. Some just go deep and hide out. Others live out here, like us.”

I nodded, slowly, even though I didn’t  _ entirely  _ understand every word, and in spite of logic dictating otherwise, I at last popped the forbidden question. “And “us” is… what, exactly?”

The man across the smouldering fire bared his teeth at me in a sharp, humorless laugh and shook his head, speaking aside to Atlas instead. “No, see, this is great. After  _ everything,  _ she has no  _ idea  _ who we are.” 

I knew I flinched from the vitreol in his voice, and found myself scrambling for something to say to appease him. “N...Not  _ no  _ idea, I mean, I’ve seen the map thing in the tunnels somewhere before, in Dema. I think.”

Leering at me in response, Chrysanth shifted so he sat with his fist against his mouth, as if it was enough to keep his words inside his mouth. He only remained that way for a moment before he stood up abruptly, shaking his head as he stormed off in the direction Clancy and the unidentified woman had left in. With him gone, I managed to relax the slightest bit, at least enough to sit next to Winter and take a couple breaths.

“You told him I’m Keons?” I muttered once he was far out of earshot. “Why’s it such a big deal I’m-”

Winter elbowed me rather hard and I cringed, trailing off. Admittedly, I didn’t care for all the dishonesty hanging in the air in the slightest, but of course she knew better than I did, so I spoke no further on it, instead turning my attention to Atlas as he squinted distractedly after his companions as if all he really wanted was to head off after them.

“So, who was the other girl?” I asked him, and he looked back towards me, seeming momentarily baffled that I was speaking to him. “The blonde,” I added, frowning.

“Oh, Gwyn. Clancy’s wife.”

“His…  _ wife, _ ” I echoed, mouth agape. The thought of a wedding ceremony out here on the barren stone attended by the other rough-and-tumble outsiders was quite an image conjured to mind to say the least - not to mention that marriages had to be officiated by a Bishop to be valid. “So, like, they left Dema together, or…?”

Mildly, Atlas shook his head. “Nah. Though, they did meet a few times at the Assemblage like,  _ yeeeears  _ ago. But now they’re both Banditos-”

“Aw, Atlas. You know Chrysanth probably wanted to do some super dramatic introduction and you just casually dropped the name.” Winter’s interruption of the tale caught me slightly off guard and I glanced towards her, tilting my head.

“Dang it. I’m always ruining his dramatics.” Atlas cut in again, all smiles, shaking his head.

“Not on purpose  _ at all, _ right?” Winter remarked dryly, rolling her eyes. Then, she looked back at me, eyebrows raised quizzically. “So, “Banditos” ring any bells in your lovely head?”

At first I was too distracted by her calling me “lovely” to actually think about her question, but I found myself coming up empty regardless and shook my head. “So… all of you - that big group last night - are called Banditos?” I asked carefully, keeping my attention on Winter. “And you all live… basically anywhere that isn’t Dema because…?” I couldn’t finish my own summary and looked to Atlas briefly as if he might have an answer, but neither of them seemed to be eager to fill in the blanks for me.

It was Atlas who broke the silence first, with a heavy sigh. “That’s not for just the two of us to say, really. We all have our own reasons that made us leave. Something that maybe just isn’t right for us, there, or a realization that we can’t ever… un-realize.”

Even though he used such simple words, I found myself unable to completely wrap my head around it all; and if I didn’t understand, how could I pretend that this was where I belonged? How was I supposed to justify to someone like Chrysanth that I wasn’t meant to go back?  _ Was  _ I supposed to go back?

As I tried to sort through the noise in my mind for something useful, it was my dream and Lisben’s words that came back again, refusing to be forgotten. “I had a dream,” I began hastily, before the feeling that I was better off keeping quiet could catch up to me. “That I was back in Dema in Lisben’s chapel. And he told me that I had to pick a side or - or fight a battle. I don’t know exactly what he meant, but when I tried to leave the chapel I-”

Pausing, I pursed my lips, shivering. “I ended up on top of a wall - the one around Dema, I think? - instead. There were vultures everywhere. And then I fell off of it.” Though it took only a few moments, recounting my dream in a rush somehow felt like a tooth and nail struggle for every word and by the time I was done I felt oddly out of breath.

Winter and Atlas merely looked at one another, expressions completely unreadable, before Winter finally made a move, leaning her weight on me gently in way of reassurance. It didn’t work.

“You  _ really  _ have to give Chrysanth more time before he finds out who her Bishop is,” Winter muttered after an agonizing silence.

Atlas’ brow furrowed for a second before he shrugged, apologetic. “Oh, I’m definitely going to tell him. I’m sorry.”

Winter scoffed, but nodded her head. “Of course you are. Seriously, girl, those two. Never tell them  _ anything  _ that you don’t want the other knowing.” Her voice sounded strained, like she was forcing herself to be lighthearted, but it was an act that couldn’t fool even the most foolish.

“...You gotta be careful,” Atlas piped up suddenly, nervously clasping his hands in front of him and studying me with bottomlessly dark eyes. “Bishops… anyone could tell you they have ways of getting into people’s heads that aren’t really…” he paused, looking at his fidgeting hands instead of me before adding, “fair.”

I tilted my head, watching as Atlas intertwined his fingers together, seemingly unable to look at me. It was fairly common knowledge that Bishops weren’t exactly  _ like  _ the rest of Dema, but what he was implying now…

“Are you saying it was more than just a bad dream?” I asked uneasily. I had feared that already in the back of my mind, but had almost dismissed it as paranoia.

“I’m not  _ necessarily  _ saying that,” he evaded, then suddenly squared his shoulders, staring me down. With the change, he was suddenly nowhere near as soft and nonthreatening as I had seen him to be so far. “All I  _ am  _ saying is that there’s a lot at risk here, with a lot of people I love on the line, so you need to be paying attention to how much of a voice you let Lisben have. You know?”

Feeling about three inches tall, I involuntarily shrank against Winter. She put her hand on my back, tittering with laughter, unfazed. “Wow, Atlas, you’ve been spending too much time with Chrysanth. You almost had me fooled with the tough guy act there for a second,” she teased, and Atlas only managed to stay serious for a split second before firing her a dimpled grin full of sunshine, all signs of whatever it was that had made me feel so small vanishing.

“I’m totally serious,” he insisted after a moment, giving me a glance before suddenly looking over his shoulder as if he’d sensed something. Sure enough, at the same time, I spotted Chrysanth returning from the direction he’d left in, alone, looking as though his mood was no less foul as when he’d left.

“Clancy and Gwyn go under?” Atlas asked in a low voice once the other man neared, crossing his arms when Chrysanth nodded in response. “Well, it’d be nice if they stop by again before the next freakin’ convocation this time.”

Chrysanth seemed too busy glaring daggers at me to hear him and Atlas visibly cringed, clearly as uncomfortable with the tension as I was. Of course, I was waiting for someone to drop the update damning my fate and Atlas would undoubtedly be the one to do it - we weren’t exactly on even ground.

“So, what's the story with this one, Winter?” Atlas wondered, waving a hand at me. Giving her a chance to tell Chryanth on her own terms, I realized. A sweet enough gesture, but ultimately meaningless.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Bandanna Man,” Winter returned with mock harshness in her voice.

Chrysanth tilted his head slightly at the nickname, then cracked a little smirk that I realized was the first genuine smile I’d seen on him, and he looked towards Atlas. “Bandanna Man, huh? I’m definitely using that from now on. “Oh, you want something? Go see Bandanna Man over there, I’m busy.” Perfect.”

“P-please don’t.” Atlas’ attempt to stay serious wasn’t very convincing as the corners of his mouth pulled into a smile. But the distraction was forgotten in a matter of seconds as Chrysanth looked back at Winter, expectant, still awaiting an answer. 

Oddly, I felt a surge of anger at being overlooked, and admittedly at Chrysanth for putting the pressure on her over something he had no right to, really, and ignoring me. So, I made probably the hundredth terrible decision I’d made in the last twenty-four hours and stood up, stepping to Chrysanth rigidly. If this was my battle, I wasn’t going to let it pass me by while anyone else got the first word in on my fate; that much was certain. 

“Firstly, my name’s Elysia. So, I don’t want to hear either of you calling me “that girl” or anything like that again. Secondly, she found me at the convocation grounds after  _ you  _ crashed it with your little magic trick leaving me worried out of my mind about what you’d done to  _ my _ Bishop. And at this point, I’m not sure why I left if I have to answer to you now instead of Lisben.”

In the brief seconds after the words had tumbled out of my mouth, I realized that I had no idea what to do regardless of his reaction; nobody had ever hit me before, and I probably wouldn’t know how to hit him back. But he didn’t move, studying me with what I could only describe as utter fascination. 

“Lisben?” He repeated at last, taking a small step towards me. At this point I was about as uncomfortable as I could ever visualize myself being as Chrysanth now looked at me like a bloody steak was to a dog. 

“Chrysanth,” Atlas cautioned from behind the other man, standing up as if he thought he might need to intervene. Winter stood, too, and when I glanced at her, her attention was fixed on Chrysanth as well, eyes unwavering and intense.

But the moment passed and the severity in Chrysanth’s eyes softened to a strange, earnest desperation, leaving the adrenaline thumping in my chest to cease. Nonetheless, when he reached towards me I tensed, unsure of his intentions until he only ran his fingertips down the strip of tape Clancy had left on one of my shoulders, eyes vacant, misted over with thoughts I couldn’t begin to guess.

“You know how long I’ve waited for one of you to realize?” He asked me at last, the hard, perpetually irritated tone vanishing from his voice, suddenly leaving him sounding exactly like Clancy. “Ten years I’ve waited for one of you to come through Trench. My little stunt at the Glorification? A last resort. And now, you’re standing in front of me while I’ve been putting you through the paces like one of Keons’.”

He paused, looking over at Atlas with what I realized was genuine uncertainty - fear, even. Oddly, I hadn’t expected him to be one to look to anyone else for directions, yet he was unmistakably waiting for Atlas’ move. My own cautious bewilderment only multiplied when Atlas nodded his head towards me, quietly muttering to Chrysanth, “go ahead and show her.”

Chrysanth jerked his head away slightly, biting at his bottom lip, then whisked away at a pace that rather surprised me, ducking into the nearby tent that was the first I’d seen that stood tall enough to stand up in. After a minute, he returned with two rolled-up papers which he lay flat on the ground in front of me, stacked on top of one another, so that both images were visible through the thin wax paper, overlapping. Instinctively, I knelt for a closer look.

One was a map of Dema, I immediately realized, and the other was the map I’d seen in the tunnels. After giving me a second to process what I was looking at, Chrysanth rapped his index finger against Lisben’s district, over a spot of the map which had no lines running through it. “See this, this is the residential area of Lisben’s, where you lived. But you know that. It’s also the only part of your district that isn’t crawling with watchers 24/7. It also happens that there’s no tunnels running under that part of Dema, so that means…”

“No way in, no way out,” Atlas chimed in.

“So, in…” Pausing, Chrysanth scrunched up his face and looked up at the sky. “Yeah…  _ ten _ years, no one from Lisben’s has ever made it out,” Chrysanth followed up, his expression hardening. “That kind of makes me wonder why  _ you _ ? Why  _ only  _ you? You don’t know us or the bigger picture at all so-” He stopped abruptly, putting both hands over his face and rocking back and forth for a very brief but rather concerning second before standing up and beginning to pace. Very quickly, as if having trouble containing himself inside his own body. 

Uncertainly, I looked to Atlas. He gave his head the tiniest of shakes, seemingly a command to wait. So, I did, until a question came to mind that I couldn’t silence.

“When Winter and I were talking last night s-she said,” I began, becoming more uncertain as I went on. “She said you’d be, uh… really upset if you found out where I’m from. But… isn’t this what you wanted? Weren’t you waiting? Shouldn’t that - ah… me… being here be… good?” Even though I couldn’t help thinking my question had come out borderline incoherent, Chrysanth stopped pacing abruptly to stare through me with glazed-over eyes.

“It has certain risks,” Atlas muttered after the other man said nothing for a solid minute.

“Like that I -  _ we _ \- can’t afford to lose you back to him. You're our one shot.” Chrysanth added in a barely audible, broken voice. Then he looked away again, swallowing hard. 

There were about a thousand cards in play that I couldn’t see - this, I realized. But it wasn’t in me to ignore the conflict and pain so plain on anyone’s face, so I reached over and let my hand rest on Chrysanth’s shoulder, half-expecting him to recoil away. And though he did tense, when his eyes met mine I thought for a fleeting second the clarity there would mean my words would pierce through, and so I spoke.

“I can’t promise you anything. Not yet.” That admittance came first, painfully. “But I’ve seen a lot since I left that I know I’ll never be able to forget, and now I know there is a  _ choice.  _ There is a  _ battle _ and you’ve all been fighting it this entire time. And if I have to pick a side every day for the rest of my life, I want to pick yours. I want to choose the Banditos.”


	4. temperature is dropping, not sure if i can see this ever stopping

With the perspective I now had from afar in Trench, I slowly came to terms with the reality that the weeks following the Assemblage seemed even darker outside of Dema. Though I could blame it on the nights literally growing longer and the days shorter, it seemed to go further than that as all around me, the names of the Glorified spread without awe or reverence.

They called them simply “the dead,” which was a factual statement, but it was one that was silenced by Bishops. The dead, I realized, were not only “citizens of Dema,” to these people - they were siblings, distant family, old friends. The camaraderie somehow surprised me. 

The Assemblage was held on what was, on paper, the autumnal equinox, and in practice it meant colder and darker days to come, until inevitably the sun seemed to barely exist at all. And normally, in Dema, the week following was more chatter-filled than any other - though not necessarily _ happier _by any means - but the first week after this convocation was infinitely different for me. 

I was, it seemed, never truly alone here as I often found myself in Dema; it seemed there was always someone a matter of metres away, studying my new face and stance; and when it wasn’t a stranger, it was Winter, staying close by in between the countless times she was called away.

It turned out, if Chrysanth and Atlas were somewhat the bipartisan, unspoken leaders of Trench, Winter was the unsung hero behind the scenes keeping everything moving. Everytime someone approached with an issue, no matter what it was, she would head off with them determinedly and return without fail, dirty or exhausted or both, but never dissatisfied, it seemed to me. 

Meanwhile, to my surprise, Chrysanth almost never left his camp, or even his tent, often only poking his head out for meals and brief exchanges with Atlas that, at least, seemed to lift both their spirits. I couldn’t work up the courage to ask just what he was doing all the time. Atlas, similarly to Winter, frequently disappeared during the day and returned carrying loads of firewood that he would bring to the cave to be distributed, returning sweaty but oddly cheerful. At least it explained why he was almost ridiculously in-shape.

Ultimately, I was more or less left abandoned. Back in Dema, I knew exactly what to expect no matter what day it was, and knew what was expected _ of _me at all times. Now my only instructions were to keep the truth of my district to myself and not cause any problems. Both simple, and so very far from enough to keep me occupied. It left me with too much time to think, and it seemed when the sky turned dark, so did my thoughts.

Luckily, said thoughts weren’t all so terrifying as they introduced themselves to me, so long as Winter was by me. And I could tell she was trying to be in ways no one in Dema ever bothered to be. 

My seventh night in Trench brought a bitter cold wind, the kind that warned of frost just around the corner, and with it came a bleakness that was new to me. Even the dancing fire couldn’t keep the cold and dark at bay, it seemed, and I felt unusually unlike myself. Ignoring the weight that seemed to press on me constantly was all that I was accustomed to, so when I found myself spilling my melancholic thoughts to Winter I knew I stunned us both.

“It’s just going to keep getting colder and darker,” I blurted, my choice words to lead into the difficult thoughts I couldn’t will away. “I don’t know if I can - if I’m strong enough for all this.”

Winter’s attention pulled away from a staring contest with the dark behind me and she looked at me with a deep, thoughtful concern that sent an ache into my chest.

“It’s not like I _ want _to be too weak I just-” I began again in a flustered rush, then cut myself off, cringing and starting again, slower. “I just… I’m not like the rest of you. I don’t know what to do without my Bishop, and even if I did, I’d be no good at any of it. How could I ever belong here when I can’t even shake the feeling that I was never meant to leave Dema?”

Winter’s expression didn’t change and she stared at me for longer still before suddenly waving a hand at me, gesturing for me to come closer. Confusedly, I scooched around from my spot opposite her at the firepit, tilting my head to ask her some semblance of “okay, what now?”

She said nothing else, though, instead pointing off in the direction of a large cluster of campfires that were a little ways down the incline our camp was situated at the crest of. I swivelled and looked off into the distance, becoming concerned at this point. 

“What? Is something going o-”

Unexpectedly, Winter cut off my question by grabbing my shoulders from behind and pulling me closer, digging her chin into my shoulder. It felt rather aggressive to be a _ hug, _but when she murmured in my ear a moment later, her voice didn’t imply the same anger her actions did.

“Do those people down there look _ dead _to you?” Her voice was one of feigned innocence, clearly trying to lead me somewhere. Rather than snapping back quickly, I took a moment to let silence enfold us and I listened to the faraway laughter and clamour; even from such a distance, I could see their bodies moving about in the moonlight.

“Obviously not,” I muttered, admittedly suspicious due in part to the feeling that I was being held hostage by Winter in exchange for my response. But she loosened her grip on me and reclined now, running her hand down the length of my hair resting on my back.

“Well, I never met Lisben, and I never will. But if he told you that everyone who leaves Dema dies, just look around. There are only two explanations - either that he has no _ idea _ what really goes on out here, or he’s been lying to you for your entire life. Either way, he’s not the beacon of truth and wisdom that you see him as.” 

All the while as she said this she stroked my hair, slowly, soothingly, despite the turbulence raging just under the surface of her voice. Gradually, I gave up on holding myself up rigidly and laid back as well, leaning on her and staring up into the sky.

“It sounds so simple when you say it like that,” I sighed, raising my hand and tracing an array of stars with my finger.

“It _ is _simple,” Winter replied flatly. I craned my neck to look at her expression, somewhat surprised to find that her eyes were fixed on the stars above as mine had been seconds ago. She looked more thoughtful than irate, at least, even though I knew putting up with me had to be getting old at this point.

“Trust me,” Winter continued after a few minutes of silence, beginning to comb her fingers gently through my hair. “I know at first it all seems like too much, but at some point, someday, the target of all that self-doubt _ will _ change. Listen to the world around you. We all have our own story and every one of them leads to Trench. No matter how unworthy you feel, _ something _ led you here. Even if you’re still trying to figure that out, there must be a reason you came here.”

Anxiety burned in my core hotly, just barely kept in check by Winter’s fingers gingerly tangling in my hair and sheer force of will. Drawing a breath deep into my abdomen and holding it for a second, I braced myself and let it out slowly.

“I guess you can’t tell me what my reason is?” I blurted before I lost my courage, straining to look at Winter once again.

To my surprise though her expression was one of warmth and fondness moments ago, she turned sorrowful and shook her head. “What do I look like, a Bishop? They spent every year of your life trying to shove their idea of purpose on you and failed.” Pausing, she twined one strand of my hair around her finger slowly, brow furrowing. “...Nah. I think the harder you try to live by someone else’s ideals, the more wrong it feels, so I’m not going to tell you a damn thing about what I think you should be doing. What really matters is that you’re already on your way to figuring it out.”

“On my way?” I echoed, quietly - not exactly a question, since I already knew on some level what she meant, but a simple request for her to keep talking while my heart worked towards returning to a normal pace after yet another anxious sprint.

“You know. Realizing that there are questions that need to be asked,” Winter murmured, pensive. “That everything isn’t as simple as you thought and those questions need to be answered. And that the answers aren’t in Dema.”

“You’ve been here awhile,” I realized, frowning, unsure why it had taken so long to dawn upon me or why I had just thrown the observation out.

“Four years,” she confessed softly, nodding her head. “But that doesn’t mean I have all the answers - hell, Chrysanth and Atlas don’t. I’m still working on figuring all that out.” Falling silent, Winter’s hands withdrew from my hair and wrapped around my shoulders instead, and she rested her nose in my hair, breathing deeply. Face burning hotly, I found myself briefly distracted trying to recall the last time I’d washed my hair.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m running out of time,” she uttered, quieter than any words she’d spoken so far, her head dropping to rest in the crook of my neck and shoulder. “Usually Chrysanth has some choice words for me when I get low and that snaps me right out of it. But sometimes I just want something else, you know?” 

If one wanted to strictly divide the Bishop’s districts between tough love and the genuine kind, Chrysanth’s certainly wasn’t aligned with the latter; but that distinction was fundamentally useless, particularly in this moment with Winter’s warm breath on my neck. I nodded instead of saying anything that would undoubtedly be stupid, gathering up the courage to put my hands on hers. 

“Do you want to go inside?” I asked carefully after the few long moments of silence it took me to realize that she was, very quietly, smothering sobs against the shoulder of my shirt. When she nodded, I leaned forward to build up the fire and she released me; by the time I turned around to say something else, she had already disappeared into the tent. 

I crawled in after her and burrowed under the blanket, listening for any sign that she was still crying and I ought to comfort her, but the only sound from her now was steady breathing, almost as though she’d immediately fallen asleep. But after several minutes, she rolled over to face me, though I could barely make out her features in the dark.

“Sacarver tried to crush all this out of me,” she whispered hoarsely, brushing her hand across my face and sweeping my hair away from my eyes. “Now that I have all these feelings coming up again, I don’t know what to do with any of it. It's terrifying. I've been hurt for this before, and now...”

Essentially feeling like my heart was splintering into bits while also birthing a dozen butterflies, I scrambled for words. My own rage at her heartless Bishop shocked me most, though, and in the end I foolishly asked, “is that why you left?”

Scoffing deep in her throat and swiping away her tears in the dark, she rolled away from me once more, pulling the covers up to her chin. “Maybe a part of it,” she admitted, bitterly. “But more than that, watching my Bishop kill the people around me and expecting us to _ rejoice, _ I-” stopping, she faked a cough to cover her voice breaking, then sniffed, shrugging. “Eventually just _ leaving _wasn’t even enough. I decided when I got out I was going to become the biggest wrench in their gears I possibly could. And if that means dedicating the rest of my life to the Banditos, then that’s what I’ll do.”

“I think you’re doing a good job,” I giggled, though not entirely sure if I was allowed to joke at this point. “I mean, you converted the very first member of Lisben’s district to your cause - who else can say that?”

Her complete silence in response disquieted me and I felt unease beginning to chew on me. After a moment, something far more dreadful than anything I had thought so far that dark night reared its ugly head and despite how hard I tried to crush it down, I knew there was no ignoring it.

“Winter, did you only bring me here _ because _I’m Lisben’s?” I rasped, though I was equally afraid of asking as I was of her answer.

To my surprise, she rolled over to face me again, the vague shine of her dark eyes boring into me for a few moments before she inched closer until she was close enough to touch her forehead to mine. Frozen, I listened to the sound of my heart trying to mine its way out of my chest with its forceful beating.

“I brought you here because when I saw you, all I could think about was how you looked _ exactly _like I did when I needed help the most,” she whispered, simple words to set me free. “I’m not in the business of using people as pawns. I wanted you to come with us because I didn’t see a citizen of Dema, I saw a Bandito that wasn’t flying our colors.”

* * *

  
  


As much as I had known my decision to stay in Trench was, by no exaggeration, a choice that would fight me every day, there really was no preparation for what every day brought; at least, none that I had ever been taught. Most every morning I woke up feeling disoriented, purposeless, lost. Even discarded, most mornings, with no one to blame for it but myself.

And that meant that every dawn was a struggle to try to track myself down in my own mind, to look her in the eye and ask her if she was still able to do this. Most of the time, my answer to myself was that only Lisben _ had _that answer. Only he could pass judgement on whether or not I was too weak for this.

It was such a natural response in my mind that it never caught me off guard, but instead, it was the first moment of blatant doubt that threw me off balance. At the same time as it broke my own heart to realize I could never look to Lisben for answers again - for he knew nothing of this world - it was the first moment in the week that followed my escape that felt truly right.

If nothing else, it was what everyone around me in Trench wanted for me.

The morning the thought came to me was earlier and darker than any I’d seen in Trench so far, and despite the cold and my grogginess calling me back to sleep, I crawled out of the tent with a blanket clutched around my shoulders, leaving Winter’s warmth for the biting chill of early morning on the barren stone. Remnants of our conversation the night before haunted the corners of my mind and I looked around for something to chase the thoughts away.

With the sky still dark in the minutes before sunrise, I could easily see Chrysanth and Atlas’ nearby fire, and others scattered farther away, slowly dying as dawn drew near. Although it was difficult to see where to place my feet I stumbled my way over and hovered by the pair’s faintly glowing embers that remained from last night before tossing a bundle of dry branches onto it for better light. Then, I ducked into the tall tent that hosted supplies and many of Chrysanth’s “plans.”

The map he’d shown me that week ago was still laid out on an askew table and I leaned close to it, straining in the dark to make out all the details. 

If there was no way out of Lisben’s district through unseen methods, that meant the only way back was to go up to the front gate or to be found by a Bishop or Watcher and purposely brought back. And though that had never happened in my district, everyone knew that meant a smearing. Involuntarily, I covered my throat with my hand.

Even if I did want to, I couldn’t go back. Not in the face of that.

Shaking myself off, I looked back down at the map. The tunnels were quite symmetric, as was Dema itself, which meant Nico’s district was in a rather different position than my own - though Chrysanth had made it rather clear mine was the only one left in the dark, despite many gaps in the tunnel's coverage. I shuddered to think what Nico’s had to do to escape - it surely wasn’t pretty.

Losing interest in the map, I meandered past a tarped-off area, circling around to peer past. The red of a Bishop robe in the dark met me and I almost fell back in fright as I stumbled away, though it was clear a moment later it was only an empty garment, hanging alone ominously.

“Convincing, huh?” A voice sounded beside me and I instinctively skittered away, stifling a shriek as I almost brought the entire tent down by running into the cloth wall. Only Chrysanth, I knew, yet he’d appeared seemingly without a sound, as if he’d simply teleported beside me. “Sorry,” he said a moment later, though his shit-eating smirk told me he was anything but.

“Is it a real robe?” I wondered, then rolled my eyes at myself. “I mean - did it really belong to a Bishop?”

Chrysanth shook his head, taking a moment to stare into the dark past me, at the robe, then turned away, heading to the tent’s exit and ducking out. For a moment I thought he’d literally only shown up to scare the crap out of me, but then he reached his hand back inside, waving at me impatiently. Giving the red robe a final glance, I scrambled out after him. 

He was already sitting by the fire when I emerged, so I sat across from him, though uncertain. In the last week he’d hardly spoke to me at all and Winter and Atlas alike had told me to leave him alone, to let him come to me - “like a cat,” Winter had joked. But now, after his invitation to join him, I began wondering if I was now _ supposed _to be the one to say something. After some thought, though, I decided to wait.

“It’s not a real Bishop robe,” he rasped after a lengthy silence. “Just a normal robe dyed red. Which truly is all a Bishop robe is, you know. The garment itself is nothing. All the power is in the power Bishops have over… _ them. _”

I couldn’t help thinking his pause and stresses were deliberate, an emphasis on the people of Dema being something separate and outside himself. And he was probably expecting me to comment on it. Instead, I looked towards the tent I’d soon learned he shared with Atlas, uncertain. This was the first time I’d really found myself in a one-on-one with Chrysanth, but I felt the slightest bit prepared for it.

“I have a question about the tunnels,” I began, leaving the robe’s discussion behind. “I mean - what _ are _they?”

“Tunnels,” Chrysanth replied dryly, giving me a snide look that I knew by now was harmless enough. “Nah, I get you. Nobody knows how they got there. Some ancient rivers, maybe, and some hollowed out by people hundreds of years before Dema was even thought of. Who knew they would end up being so important?”

Part of me thought the Banditos themselves had perhaps carved them out, but somehow it seemed even more suitable that they had been simply stumbled upon and used to help their cause. Like the universe itself was pulling for them, in a way. Nodding, I forced myself to continue towards my initial point.

“I'm surprised there's a way in and out of Nico's district - he doesn't seem like the type to let people slip out, he's...” I continued, carefully, pausing to purse my lips as my mouth began to go dry. Though I wasn’t sure what I expected, when Chrysanth’s eyes focused on me intensely at the mere mention of the Bishop, I was undeniably daunted. Swallowing hard, I continued. “So… I was just wondering… why I’m so sp- I mean I’m _ not _special, but I-I, uh…”

Clasping my hands together in my lap anxiously, I studied Chrysanth for a moment in a vain attempt to decode the current strain of death glare he was firing at me. “Wasn’t it just as hard to find someone from Nico’s district?” I managed at last.

“See, since I had never been in Lisben’s district and none of us ever had, that’s a very different case. When it comes to Nico’s district, we have a _ pretty _good source of information from a local.” He said all this with a slightly curled lip, craning his neck to look away from me and into the dark.

“You?” I guessed, suddenly feeling idiotic. I had seen plenty of Nico’s residents at the Assemblages over the years, and Chrysanth fit the bill to a T; seemingly perpetually annoyed, and somewhat unpredictable in his mood changes.

“Yeah. Me.” He agreed flatly, resting his chin in his hands and looking back at me contemplatively. “You wanna know how people get out of Nico’s?” On one hand, I did, but on the other hand I was fairly certain he was going to make something up on the spot. So I just nodded.

“When he finds out that we might be questioning, he opens the gates and lets us walk out.”

Sitting up straighter, I shook my head exasperatedly. “What is it with you and Atlas and just telling lies?” I chided, looking towards the tent as if he would magically appear to swoop in and follow up with the truth. 

“I’m serious,” Chrysanth growled lowly, staring vaguely into the distance behind me. “I don’t like to go there in my head, but I understand him perfectly. If we’re doubting him, he lets us see the _ nothing _ that’s out here and wait for us to come crawling back, or he drags us back before the cold can finish the job, “saves” us. It’s a gambit, to make us think he’s the most _ powerful _thing that there is.” 

Stopping, Chrysanth made a strangling motion with his hands, then his head dropped to almost rest on his knees and I saw his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath as he seemed to reign himself in somewhat.

“They pretty much all go back to him in the end,” Chrysanth said at last, sitting up straight once again, eyes glazed over. “Even though most of the time they don’t see the light of day again after the smearing that follows.”

“He kills them.” The realization was like an ice cold hand gripping my throat, rather what I imagined a Bishop’s hand to feel like, and I felt a shiver pass through me.

“Oh no, don’t be _ crazy _ ,” Chrysanth burst out, suddenly as acidic as ever. “He’d never do something like that - we do it for him! His hands are _ clean _under all that black paint!” With his he bared his teeth in a forceful laugh, looking up at the starry sky.

Blinking, I shook my head. “No. They’re not. I… I _ knew _Nico was cruel. But what you’re saying is just - just… Evil. Literally evil.”

Chrysanth tilted his head a little, then nodded. “I don’t disagree,” he answered simply, scratching at his head for a moment before firing me the tiniest of smirks. “That also sounds an awful lot like something a Bandito would say.”

There was no snappy comeback for that; there probably wasn’t meant to be. Ever foolish, though, I tried anyways. “But… Lisben is _ nothing _like that. He’s like - the exact opposite. Everyone I grew up with thinks that Dema is the safest place - that everyone who leaves dies! And if he smears any of us, it was always for our own good - or because we literally asked. It’s no wonder I’m the first one who ever thought they had to leave - why would anyone want to when every other district is a worse option, nevermind this wasteland?”

Chrysanth gave me a long, searching stare - flinty and analytical, not the type that aimed to understand for empathy’s sake, and I was compelled to look away, shaking my head. When the man across from me stood I expected that he was leaving me to my own turmoil, but instead he gestured to me and began to walk off. Bewildered, I stood and trailed after him.

After a few moments I realized he was headed straight for the stone formation that stretched into the sky, hiding the cave entrance I’d come through a week ago from the world. Rather than circling around to the entrance, though, he began scaling the side of it to gain height. Hesitantly, I searched for an easy path and clambered up the several steep meters behind him until we both stood at the top, leaving me winded from the effort.

When I finally caught my breath, I turned to look at Chrysanth, then followed along the direction he was pointing in. As I took in the sight, unexpectedly it felt like my heart fell down into my stomach. Part of me hadn't realized we were still so close to Dema that, in order to see the walls around it, you needed only gain some height. 

“So, my logic is this: If Dema was really the safest place for us, why the walls?” Chrysanth muttered, then gestured around himself. “There's nothing out here that they need to keep out. The only purpose the wall serves is to keep us _ in _.”

Frowning, I shifted my footing on the narrow space I had to stand. “I guess I never thought about it like that,” I admitted, then shivered, forcing myself to look away from the walls and back to Chrysanth.

“Being up here also makes me realize how _ high _ those walls are,” I added, rubbing my hands over my arms and wishing I hadn't left my blanket back at the fire. “You can't even see the sun rise or set in Dema, and at night the lights block out the stars.”

My companion looked sidelong at me, lips pressed tightly together, then stepped forward to the edge of our high perch and sat, legs dangling over. He didn't say anything for a few minutes, then tilted his head slightly and glanced back at me.

“I come up here a lot,” he said, quietly, like there was someone nearby he didn't want to hear. “Whenever I'm doubting all this. And I take a good look at where I came from, and where I am now. The view out here is better, for sure, but forgetting what you left behind is a mistake. I've figured out that much.”

Of all the things he'd said to me so far, none of it was quite so shocking and unnerving as this expression of uncertainty. In fact, I gawked at him stupidly for a few good seconds before it fully sank in.

“You? _ Doubting _?” I echoed like some sort of useless parrot. “You said you've been out here for ten years! How can you not be past all that?”

Chrysanth went quiet. I'd known as I was saying them that my words were wrong - too harsh, too hasty - but now I couldn't help feeling what little connection building between us begin to crumble away - but I didn't want to allow it to. 

So, I shuffled forward and sat next to him, and after a few seconds to determine where his attention lay I craned my neck away from Dema to look to the horizon with him. Hundreds of shades of yellow and orange bled from beyond the curve of land falling away, heralding the rising sun. It was breathtaking, but by the time this light hit Dema it would be colorless and dull.

“So it never stops, does it?” I asked him at last, once the light on the horizon was too bright to stare into and I watched the disc of light creep up the walls of Dema instead. “That doubt. That feeling like you've made the wrong decision in leaving… it’ll be with me forever - and you, too. All of us.”

He smiled at me tiredly in response, the sun’s fiery light reflecting radiantly in his eyes. “Yeah. You get it.”

It didn't exactly feel like praise, but nevertheless I felt relieved, like my earlier words had been forgiven. His quiet was gentler now and I let it blanket us, until from our vantage point we saw Atlas emerge from the tent in the distance, and even from so far away I could tell he was immediately looking for Chrysanth.

He stood up from his spot beside me promptly and I knew he was going to depart without a farewell, but for some reason I didn't want to let him, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Thank you. For showing me this. Even though I've been here for a week, I still haven't found the time to just sit and watch the sun rise… so - yeah. Thank you for sharing that with me.” My rushed but sincere thank you seemed to give him pause and he turned to face me, eyes narrowed, all sharpness as he so often was.

“You know what's sad about that?” He asked, and I smiled tightly, bracing myself. “That was your first time seeing a sunrise, really. But you didn't look on it with any sort of wonder. Maybe if a kid in Dema saw it, they would appreciate it so much more, but us? We're just too weary for that, huh?”

I knew his words were rhetorical and I simply looked up towards him, as he didn't give me a chance to criticize his cynicism before he leapt over the edge of our high perch and landed easily down below, taking off briskly in the direction of his camp.

“Anything to get the last word in, hm, Chrysanth?” I mused at his absence, then stood and began to climb down carefully the way I'd ascended.

By the time I got back to our adjacent camps, Atlas and Chrysanth were sitting close together, heads together in quiet conversation, and Winter sat outside alone. Pretending neither of them existed I grabbed my blanket from their fire and left them behind.

There wasn't much question in my mind I’d head back to Winter instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how y'all doing, y'all having fun? any thoughts? can i get you somethin? bottle of water maybe? still, not sparkling. no? aight, see you next week


	5. know i'll keep moving

Winter smiled in my direction as I neared, though the expression was tinted with sadness and concern - briefly, I felt guilt bite at me realizing how she must have felt when she woke up and I wasn’t there, especially after what we’d shared last night. But before I could apologize, she waved a hand off in the direction of the other pair’s camp.

“Chrysanth giving you a hard time?” She wondered as I sat across from her.

“That lovely gentleman? No, never,” I quipped, unable to keep from smiling as I earned a small chuckle from her in response to my sarcasm. I wasn’t quite sure how to convey to her our moment upon the stone jutting into the sky, so instead I just shook my head and casually explained, “he just knew I had something on my mind, so he tried to help in his own way. He’s not so bad, really.”

Winter nodded her agreement, but it seemed the conversation ended there as she stood, turning her back to me and rifling through a pile of supplies next to our tent for something. I watched her, pensive. Not long after dawn, Winter normally left me to my own devices and disappeared off to places I didn’t know, and today would undoubtedly be no different. But, to my surprise, she returned to the fire with what looked like a sling to carry something over her shoulder with and sat once again, seemingly waiting. 

Before I could ask, Atlas approached our fire and she stood. “You ready?” He asked in a voice slightly gruff from sleepiness, finishing off the contents of a paper cup in his hand and tossing it onto our near-dead fire. Winter nodded back and they turned to leave without further acknowledgement of my existence, but before they could start off, an unfamiliar Bandito appeared, approaching our camp from the direction of the tunnel entrance at a brisk pace. Winter raised a hand as indication for both of us to wait, and headed over to meet them halfway. 

“Hey,” Atlas greeted me at last once she was gone, apparently too polite to pretend I wasn’t there in a one-on-one. I smiled at him, tight-lipped, but by now we were both too focused on Winter to bother with more. As she returned to us a few moments later, looking particularly annoyed, I instinctively stepped closer and ran my fingertips up her arm to pull her attention to me, knowing my concern would be clear to her.

She looked to me wearily, grabbing my hand and swaying it back and forth in hers briefly before letting go, addressing Atlas instead. “They need an extra set of hands down there. One of our carts lost a wheel and we’re already a day behind on getting those rations here. I think I’d better go with them.”

I knew there was a lot behind keeping the people in Trench alive, as much as I knew I was ignorant to most of the complexities, so I just kept quiet as Atlas nodded and stoically muttered, “yeah, go. And stay safe.”

Winter nodded and turned away, and I only watched anxiously as she departed with the other Bandito, face uncharacteristically grim. When I looked to Atlas I found he looked rather the same when he normally seemed, at least on the outside, to take everything in stride.

“Should I be worried?” I asked him straightforwardly before he could walk away and leave me with no answers.

“I mean, I’m always worried,” he responded with a whimsy that caught me a little off guard, giving me a smile that was almost infuriatingly flawless. Then he looked off to the east, shaking his head, expression immediately replaced by a frown. “Nah. Probably nothing to be worried about. It’s just that one issue kinda leads to another and either way we’re going to come up short.”

Nervously, I glanced in the direction Winter had disappeared in. It seemed like she wanted me staying at camp and out of sight, but she was no longer around to prevent me from doing otherwise. “Was she… going to help you with something today?” I ventured, then quickly added, “because, whatever it is, maybe I could help instead?”

Surprised, Atlas looked me up and down, then shrugged. “I mean - yeah! I guess. You couldn’t make things worse, anyway.”

Smiling weakly, I tried to mimic his effortlessly charismatic yet self-effacing nature by responding, “now, you don't know that.” But I lacked the confidence, I knew, and Atlas only raised an eyebrow, offering no response other than to pick up the makeshift sling Winter had left behind and proffer it to me. I took it and followed along behind the man as he turned and led the way across the presently abandoned wasteland.

One thing I'd learned about Atlas was that he seemed to have no trouble talking to Winter or Chrysanth one on one, but the larger the group around him got, the quieter he became, until he went silent, only speaking when directly prompted to. Knowing this, his silence this particular morning was more than a little off-putting, but I soon realized he was saving his breath for covering distance, setting a pace that was hard to keep up with using my much shorter legs. I made no comment though, focusing on my breathing and gritting my teeth - no way was I letting on I was struggling so soon.

We walked for what had to be at least a half hour down a slight decline before Atlas stopped short in front of me; I'd been watching my feet closely the whole way so I didn't trip over the rugged stone, and stumbled into his back, though he was about as sturdy as a cave wall when I did so. Looking up with a startle, I was met with the sight of…

_ Trees.  _ As far as the horizon stretched away, trees. Consciously, I knew that this was a forest, something completely natural, but I gawked at it like an idiot anyways.

“Pretty amazing compared to the crappy little trees that grow in Dema, huh?” Atlas remarked, squinting out over the sight rather than looking back at me, which I was grateful for so that he missed my jaw hanging open. Still stupidly agape, I nodded as he glanced back at me. With a smirk, he peered both ways down the ridge before us before starting down it, leaving me to follow until we reached a path worn by many footsteps that had walked here before us.

I stopped in the middle of it, watching from afar as Atlas proceeded to the treeline and paused, staring in; expression unreadable, brow furrowed. Like he was looking or listening for something. After a minute or two of this he seemed to decide it was clear of whatever he was wary of and waved a hand at me, jolting me out of my hesitation. I stumbled over and followed close behind him once again as he beelined to the husk of a fallen tree, reaching into the hollowed out trunk.

“I can't believe this forest is so close to Dema,” I whispered, not wanting to disturb the serenity of the birds chirping in the treetops. “So much life in a place I was lead to believe was lifeless for so long… and if I'd never left, I'd still never know.”

Atlas answered by simply nodding along, facing me now and sitting on the petrified log that I assumed had once been the other half of the stump beside him, revealing the contents of his hands: a small hatchet as well as a full-fledged woodcutter’s axe, and a whetstone he set to work running along the hatchet blade, looking out to the ridge we’d just come down watchfully.

Bewildered, I watched on in silence until he had moved on to the axe’s blade, attention far afield as if he'd done this hundreds of times - and I supposed he had. “What are you looking for?” I asked at last, turning and following his stare out towards the hill that bordered this end of the forest.

“Bishops come out here, sometimes,” Atlas explained absently, glancing towards my alarmed expression and shaking his head mildly. “Not a lot. And not on a chapel day like today. So, you can relax.”

“What do they  _ do  _ out here?” I wondered aloud, still feeling rather on high alert at the mere prospect of running into a Bishop out here.

“Same things we do, I’d assume.” His answer revealed very little, but after a moment he added, “get wood, forage, clean water maybe. I’m not dumb enough to stick around to watch and find out.” Hesitantly, I nodded, taking a deep breath and trying to force myself to relax, though it was still difficult.

“Is this where you are all the time?” I wondered at last, stepping a little closer to him and scanning my immediate vicinity for felled trees. Sure enough, I saw one nearby with the quick glance, and would surely find more if I continued searching, but instead looked back to Atlas. “I think you make less sense to me all of a sudden.”

“What does  _ that _ mean?” He inquired, standing and offering me the hatchet in his hand, handle-first, tossing the whetstone in his hand back into the trunk in the same moment. I took the hatchet and trailed after him as he headed deeper into the woods, leaving me to find words.

“I don't know, it's sort of… violent?” I ventured at last, sounding more disquieted than I meant to let on. To cover up for it I added, “I guess it just seems more up Chrysanth’s alley.”

Atlas stopped walking abruptly next to a tree that had a long mark left in it, seemingly by a blade, then took stance next to it and swung his axe into the trunk; the sharp  _ thwack  _ echoed away, stunning the twittering birds in the canopy into silence.

“I find it kind of funny you would assume he's violent, because I'm pretty sure in the time I've known him he's only hit somebody like… once.” With this, Atlas swung at the tree again, sending a wood chip flying away. “And then he complained that he hurt his hand,” he added, grinning at his recollection of what I'm sure was a pretty good story. But I couldn't bring myself to be interested in it at the moment.

“I just, like -  _ Nico _ , you know?” I attempted, shrugging helplessly. “He's, I don't know… there’s a word for what he is, but…”

“Sadistic,” Atlas offered, turning his back to me, facing deeper into the woods instead. Before I had the chance to agree emphatically, as that was _exactly_ the word I was looking for, he continued. “But you're looking at it totally backwards. A violent Bishop doesn't make violent citizens, it makes _afraid_ citizens. And if you knew Chrysanth like I do I think you would understand that.”

There was an edge to his voice that threatened to make my blood run cold and he set back to work felling the tree he'd started on, chopping away until it went down easily, its branches shivering violently where it fell. Uneasy, I hung back as Atlas turned to face me, squinting down at me almost coldly. 

Unsure how he managed to be so intimidating despite the fact I knew he was actually one of the sweetest guys I had ever met, I averted my eyes, staring at the forest floor intently instead. He seemed to catch on rather quickly that he was making me more than a little uneasy, sitting on the trunk of the tree he'd just chopped down and leaning his head back, looking up through the trees and into the sky. 

“You've gotta know by now that there's no such thing as a  _ good _ Bishop, Elysia.” I was surprised by the weight of his voice, and he seemed to be having trouble with it himself, sighing and scrunching up his face. “And that's affected all of us, one way or another. But you should know that hardly ever makes us dangerous to anyone except ourselves. We aren't our Bishops, just…”

He stopped, picking at the tree bark next to his leg, his more-severe-than-average demeanor taking a sudden turn to despondency. “We’re only whatever we have left after they take and take. And usually anger, violence - those are the kind of things we have to take  _ back _ from them. At the very least, I had Chrysanth while I was doing that. That guy means the world to me, you know, and you accusing him of being things he’s not feels… bad.”

Deciding abruptly that I didn't like the more melancholy side of Atlas, I bent down more to his height when seated and forced a smile. “I’m sorry. Do you wanna tell me the story about the time Chrysanth punched a guy?” I attempted. Atlas didn't even smile dryly, though, and I sighed, stepping back as he stood up and started to move away from me, slinging his axe over his shoulder.

When I started to follow along behind him, he stopped, suddenly scoffing at himself in exasperation. “No. Sorry. I’m so used to doing this with Winter I totally forgot. I need you to start hacking branches to burn - I’m going to go find my own tree to work on.”

After a bit of a rocky conversation blowing over without consequence, I hadn’t expected the simple directions to strike me the way they did. I abruptly froze, the very same dread that had left me abandoned on the Assemblage grounds - the same that had petrified me as I emerged into the Bandito camp - swooped down from nowhere and sunk its talons irremovably into me, pressing until it felt like my lungs were captives in my chest.

This time, there was nobody to chase these things away as they circled me; my voice turned to stone in my throat and I clenched my grip hard against the hatchet handle, watching helplessly as Atlas started off deeper into the woods; he only made it a couple steps, though, before realizing I hadn't moved and turning back to me, visibly puzzled.

Knowing I had to find some way to explain, I frantically searched my mind for any words, any at all. “I just-!” I began, but a burning in my throat warned me that if I went on it wouldn't be long before I was crying in shame, or frustration, or both. And as nice as Atlas was, breaking down in his presence certainly wasn't on the list of things I wanted to do. Swallowing hard, I shrugged my arms at my sides and looked down at my feet. 

To my surprise, he all but ran back to me, putting a hand on my shoulder gently. “Hey, it's okay,” he murmured to me, his voice even more nonthreatening than usual, which was a feat. He was talking to me like I was a child, I knew, but I ignored my indignancy - after all, I was acting like one, and felt like one, at the moment.

“Look, there's no wrong way to chop off branches, I promise. It'll all keep us warm in the end, okay?” He continued, stooping slightly to try to catch my eye. I avoided looking back at him, face aflame with humiliation. “I know, doing new things is kinda freakin’ terrifying. But you're going to do a lot better if you try than if you let it freeze you up like this forever. I speak from experience when I say you’ll fear your fears forever if you never do anything you’re afraid of.”

Sniffing, I shook my head. I knew, I  _ knew _ , he meant well and that he was  _ right, _ but somehow it just burned worse. “Lisben-” I began, but oddly my tongue almost tripped on the name - it felt foreign in this explanation, so I abandoned the thought, rubbing my hand over the tape on one of my shoulders to feel that it was still there.

For as long as I could remember, I'd known I wasn't  _ supposed  _ to let myself get frustrated or short-tempered - or at least, not supposed to show it - but if Atlas’ earlier words had any truth to them, that was just another method Lisben had employed to control me. So, I threw the unspoken rule for myself aside, kicking at the fallen tree next to me with just enough force to let loose my anger, but not so hard that it hurt.

“I just - ugh! - I feel like such a - an… idiot baby!” I shouted off into the trees, not exactly at Atlas, but certainly for him to hear. For a moment he simply looked rather taken aback, but then he scoffed and began to snort with laughter, shaking his head. The silliness of my words came back to me and I found myself trying not to laugh along with him.

“Sorry, I'm sorry,” he blurted after a moment, raising both hands to me, palms facing me. “That wasn't funny. What  _ is _ funny is that you've been here for - what - a week? Of course everything seems scary. You are  _ kinda _ an “idiot baby” by Bandito standards. And that's not a bad thing!”

Reluctantly, I forced myself to look up at him as he paused, his brow furrowing as he studied me with his deep, dark eyes. “Besides - you know that you have all of us to lean on, no matter how unsure you feel, right?” 

As he said this, I couldn't help noticing that his delivery lacked his usual surety, his hands fidgeting in front of him, feet shifting constantly on the forest floor as if he couldn't find a way to stand that felt right. Realizing in that moment he was every bit as afraid to say the wrong thing as I felt that I might do something wrong anytime I tried, the few traces left of my frozen panic weren't so difficult to shake off.

Seeing him stand in front of me and push through his own fear almost flawlessly left me admiring him more than I had ever admired anyone but a Bishop - and that had been empty admiration, I knew now. Though I didn't have words for the swelling feeling in my chest, I nodded, fighting the urge to hug Atlas out of sheer relief.

“Okay, yeah,” I began, swiping away the itchy tears that had begun to well up in my eyes, “you know what, I am an idiot baby, and that's okay. I'm not going to be one forever.”

At this Atlas grinned, looking more like himself once again in an instant. “Yeah, that's the spirit,” he enthused, chuckling a bit at what I knew had been a pretty ridiculous-sounding affirmation. Sobering a second later, he tilted his head a little, studying me. “So, you're okay?”

My mind was flung back to the last time someone had asked me that same question with that same concern; Clancy, after plucking me off the cold stone and brushing fear that crippled me off my jumpsuit like it was nothing more than dust. 

Then, I had answered “yes” only because it was the closest thing to “okay” I would get, and though that hadn't changed, I realized that since then my definition of “okay” had gotten better. Maybe not significantly, certainly not enough to change my life, but… better. 

So, unable to keep a smile off my face, I nodded. And, silently, I resolved to myself that my “okay” would continue to get better. With Winter, Atlas - and Chrysanth, even, too - to lean on, I knew I could keep moving forward.


	6. stay with me, i'd live for you & that's hard to do

As expected, life in Trench grew darker as days continued to pass by heedless of anything or anyone pleading otherwise. Daylight hours escaped away more and more swiftly, the time of year when many in Dema would be working on their tasks past sundown well upon us before I knew it. 

To me it seemed that the energy in Trench began to dwindle as the first frosts hit, and the few familiar faces I'd come to expect to see at night dwindled as well, leaving the air itself seemingly disquieted. Even the population of vultures seemed to drop off until I saw only a small handful fly overhead daily, bound for Dema.

Up until recently my own willful naivety had steered me away from analyzing the things that I knew would open doors in my mind which led to things I wasn't necessarily equipped to face, but I had left that part of me behind in Dema. Instead, I allowed myself to wonder, to feel fearful of the truths behind where they had all gone.

Even Chrysanth, usually brutally upfront, wouldn’t give me a straight answer when I’d asked my trio of trusted Banditos where everyone was disappearing to; he’d said something along the lines of there being several contributors, but didn’t actually tell me any specifics; Atlas just told me not to worry. 

And, most stinging of all, Winter offered me a lie that couldn’t fool me even as a young child - that she just didn’t know. Dishonesty didn’t suit her. All these things were absolutely no help, so, naturally, fear remained. 

But no one else seemed concerned in the way that I was, so I tried my best to trust in the others and go about my daily life, which slowly began to involve some simple chores that I was familiar with from my time in Dema - mending clothes and the tapestries of tents, which I had always been quite comfortable doing, mostly. In this case, though, I did them because I  _ wanted  _ to, not because it was a task given to me. The desire to be productive, I realized, felt far more valuable and powerful than the obligation.

I allowed Winter to pull me from my comfort zone more than a few times as she taught me how to replace cart wheels, and how to prepare the torches that were in constant demand for tunnel travel. She wasn’t the most patient teacher, but made up for it with persistence, and her doting affectionately on my blunders made it all the more bearable. I began to think, as I fumbled my way through life, that I would be more than content to stay this way forever, so long as she would put up with me all the while. For a time, despite my worries for the world around me, things were almost peaceful.

That was, until one day I awoke to Winter gently jostling me awake before sunrise, softly murmuring to me once I had fought off my grogginess and sat up: “It’s time to go.”

The words jolted me to full alertness with a sense of panic and urgency and I asked no questions, scrambling out of the tent behind her. Bright white light like the empty glow of Dema greeted me as I emerged and I froze, statuesque, for a second before reality broke into my initial terror. No Bishop’s neon lights, only a dusting of snow fallen in the night, dramatically altering the appearance of the landscape around us, taking it and making it pallid and lifeless.

For a moment I was so distracted by the sight that I lost track of what Winter was doing, but when I saw her knock out a pole that held up our tent, I turned to face her, watching on with what was undoubtedly a deeply troubled frown. Though she looked calm on the outside, I certainly wasn’t as she continued to bundle up our bedding until it was more or less gathered into something carriable. 

“Winter?” I questioned, tremulous, as she stood up and brushed hair back from her eyes, taking a second to breathe.

“We’ve stayed here for too long,” Winter sighed without looking at me, her eyes scanning our deserted surroundings instead. “Normally we move somewhere more sheltered before the snow hits, but we…” she hesitated, looking at me with her brow furrowed, then redirected herself. “Our watch on Dema’s gates just brought news of a Bishop leaving east of Dema. We can only assume he’s canvassing the wastes for parameter escapes before the cold would kill someone out here on their own.”

“Which Bishop?” I asked almost involuntarily, throat tight.

Winter turned her back to me, fussing over our things for a moment, mumbling, “Keons.”

I’d lived enough days with this woman by now to know she was a terrible, guilt-ridden liar. But if it wasn’t Keons, and she felt the need to  _ lie _ , it could only be someone worse. “No, it’s not,” I denied quietly, severely. “Who? Nico? Sacarver?”

Winter went still for a moment, then turned around on her heel to face me, our belongings hastily bundled under her arm, touching her spare hand to my shoulder where my worn tape had begun to peel off with many days passed wearing out the adhesive. 

“Lisben.” The confession was accompanied by her looking very intently into my eyes, but I was already far away, the name like a punch to the chest that knocked me clean out of my own body. Weeks had passed in leaps and bounds since I’d had a reason to think of him even in passing, much less cause to fear his name. And now, suddenly, he was an imminent reality.

“This is my fault,” I realized, my mouth moving on its own to form the words, tears burning in the corners of my eyes. Though I hadn’t felt it seconds ago, the cold seemed to catch up to me without warning, sapping my strength, and I sank down, kneeling desolately on the stone. After a moment, Winter joined me, her hand brushing across my cheek, though I couldn’t make myself look back at her.

“Listen, Elysia. When it gets cold, Bishops always come looking for us.  _ That’s  _ why the Banditos have been scarce - they take to the tunnels, or anywhere sheltered from the cold and from  _ them. _ ” Winter’s words to me were hissed and rushed, with a force behind them that begged to be let through the frigid panic creeping over me. “Lisben… is just doing what any Bishop thinks is his duty - we’re not accustomed to seeing him, but that’s who it is. Whether you were here or not, a Bishop was  _ always  _ going to come and we  _ always  _ have to run - this isn’t your doing, truly, lovely.” She had called me that before - I knew that somewhere vaguely in the back of my mind. “None of that is important - the important thing now is that you stay with me, okay? Please tell me you’re not going to let him take you.”

Frozen all the way through, I forced myself to look at Winter. I knew I didn’t want to -  _ couldn’t  _ \- go back. The fear of death that potentially waited there was one thing, but in Dema I was alone and that thought petrified me more than anything. Yet every district was less kind, every Bishop infamously more malevolent than my own, and now my actions had driven Lisben from Dema. Perhaps, for that, I deserved to be dragged back and smeared. 

“Elysia, I’m not going without you,” Winter tried again, cupping her hand under my chin. “And I can’t go back to Sacarver - not after… this. We can fight this together but first we have to  _ go. _ ”

From somewhere behind me I heard Atlas call out to us, some urgent cry to tell me time was up, but it barely broke through. Something rooted deeper in me than feelings, deeper than my own thoughts, pulled my body forward like the tide, away from Winter, and I gripped my hands against the slick, frozen stone beneath me to resist, to anchor myself. Until that second I had never understood those who trembled before a Bishop’s power, but now that I did I found that I had certainly never wanted to.

“He’s calling,” I managed the two words, closing my eyes tightly, though it was clear to me at this point that I couldn’t resist through sheer force of will. Winter’s instinctive reaction to my words was, it seemed, to toss her burden of fabric and other supplies to the ground and hoist me up, taking off across the stone; I could hear her panting raggedly after the first few meters, though she still reached Atlas within moments.

“Take her, okay? She can’t shake him, but she doesn’t want to go,” I heard Winter speaking and felt my body being jostled as she passed me over to Atlas, but my mind was somewhere much farther away, with the half-dozen vultures flying from Dema, following above a Bishop they thought might lead them to fresh blood.

“Where are  _ you _ going?” Atlas growled after Winter as she turned and jogged off once again - and a second later, I heard Chrysanth demand, “what is going on?” I searched for him instinctively, spotting him sprinting over from the cave entrance as he shouted. Unexpectedly, when he reached us he touched a hand to my forehead like a mother checking a child’s temperature, then looked off towards Winter. Craning my neck as best I could to see her, I realized she had run back for our tent and supplies, gathering it all back up with scrambling haste. 

“This isn’t right,” Atlas muttered lowly to Chrysanth, as if I wasn’t supposed to hear, though there was no possible way I wouldn’t - perhaps he thought I was just too far gone to tune in. “No way Lisben has a pull like this. The sentry didn’t see anyone else?”

“We don’t know anything  _ about  _ Lisben,” Chrysanth rasped back. “We shouldn’t be making any assumptions.”

The steady approach of hoofbeats on stone was what fully pulled me back to reality and I felt myself try to jerk free of Atlas’ grip, though he had no trouble keeping his balance. When Lisben appeared over the ridge on the back of one of the Bishop’s sturdy white steeds, all warmth disappeared from the air around us and, as if brought down by his very presence, frail flakes of snow began to drift from the sky above.

Winter halted in her tracks halfway between us and him and turned around to face him, every angle of her stance screaming defiance - beside me, Chrysanth started to spring forward, only for Atlas to catch him by the back of his shirt. Only then did I sense him struggling as he strained to hold back the force of his world trying to fall away and leave him behind.

“Atlas,” Lisben pronounced the name with distaste, something that I had heard in his voice only on very, very rare occasions. “Return her to me.” The demand rolled over the cold stone like a thunderclap, resonating in my chest with the same force - all the fearsome wrath I had been told the Bishops possessed lain bare. I felt Atlas’ feet lose their purchase on the stone for a second, sliding forward with the force Chrysanth exerted to advance towards the Bishop, but he shifted his weight and stayed anchored. 

“She was never yours!” It was Winter who responded in a roar that reminded me of all the rage and conviction I knew her to be capable of - it seemed she condensed it all into this moment and these words. “Your walls and your Glory are nothing to her and nothing to us! Return to those that are still asleep!”

After this the only sound at first was the cold whistle of wind and the sound of Lisben’s mount’s hooves shifting on the stone uncertainly. Even Chrysanth went still, leaving Atlas to hold onto me more tightly as Lisben’s attention shifted away from Winter, landing on me with full force. 

All the fear I’d wrestled with came back in like a tide, stronger than ever before, carrying with it a dozen other things I’d already fought with and filed away as defeated. But they never really stopped, never really went away, and I knew that - but I could fight them again, so long as Lisben gave me a choice. And, as the pull I’d felt earlier weakened, I realized that I would have one.

“Elysia… my child. Come home,” he pleaded with me quietly, weakly, sounding as I had always known him to sound now. “Or - refuse with your own words. I do not speak for you any longer - do these…  _ heretics  _ have your voice instead, now?”

Chrysanth turned around now to give Atlas an inscrutable look. “This is a trap,” he muttered lowly. “There’s no way he’s just going to go, “oh, okay,” and leave. He has something up his sleeve, and I’m not getting caught again - you remember how far gone I was last time Nico got a hand on me. No way I’d survive that again.” I saw him close one hand around his throat in my peripheral vision, leering across the plain at Lisben. 

They were such vulnerable words that I felt forbidden to hear, but Atlas only nodded stoically and looked down at me, acknowledging me as something other than deadweight for the first time since Winter had foisted me on him. “Winter,” he raised his voice just enough for it to carry to where she stood, calling her to us.

Finding my voice suddenly, I said the first thing I thought to say - “put me down.” Seeming genuinely startled, Atlas let me drop, though he looked poised to spring and grab either Chrysanth or I once again if we made any sudden moves.

“I’m not coming home-” My voice wavered at first and I stopped, wondering if my words even managed to carry to where Lisben towered on horseback several meters away. I cleared my throat, started over, stronger now. “No. I’m not coming back to Dema. That place isn’t my home - it isn’t  _ anyone’s  _ home. You lied to me my entire life about the nothingness beyond those walls! You told me that there was nothing but death waiting out here! But now I see the real doom lies in what you’ve passed off as  _ glory.  _ Something to be celebrated. I’m through believing in any of that. I’m through believing in you.”

For a moment after my words had entered into the air, never to be taken back, no soul on the outcropping budged nor made a noise; then, Winter backed towards us, and as she neared I realized I could see her entire body trembling, her free hand clenched tightly at her side. Only then did I realize just how terrified she had been to defy a Bishop, even one that was not her own, and even in Trench.

When she came close enough, I slid my hand into hers and whispered, “let’s go,” and the four of us turned as a unit; though Chrysanth and Atlas both ran for cover in the cave that waited for us, I made sure to walk slowly, keeping my hand in Winter’s, forcing myself to never look back even as I felt Lisben’s eyes on us until we rounded the corner and descended into darkness.

Once we were out of sight and I realized that we had truly escaped, all the strength I faked left me and my knees buckled, colliding painfully with the cave floor. I was too gutted to even cry now, guilt burning through me. 

“Did I really just do that?” I choked, unsure now where Winter stood in the dark, or if she was still with me at all. “He was so kind, even after I abandoned him, and I spat in his face. How do you do this? How do any of you do this?”

“I don’t know,” Winter murmured lowly from somewhere in front of me. “I’ve never seen anything like that - never seen a Bishop make no move to take someone by force if their usual tricks fail…” her voice trailed off, troubled, confused.

“Chrysanth suggested he might have been stalling us,” I said mostly on autopilot though my mouth was dry and my voice was threatening to leave me once again. “Would they ever follow us down here?”

Winter didn’t answer, and I had to strain just to detect the soft breathing from her that told me she was still with me in the dark. Realizing she was probably listening for something, I kept quiet, waiting for the moment to pass.

Finally, I heard her come closer to me and her hands awkwardly collided with my shoulders in the dark and, once she found me, she tried to help me to my feet. I stumbled at first, but managed to stand and lean against her, staring blindly into the dark.

“Why  _ don’t _ they ever come down here?” I wondered finally, though I wasn’t sure Winter knew the answer, or if there was one.

“Maybe they’re afraid of the dark. Or flammable.” Winter answered, a weak joke that didn’t work in the slightest to diffuse the fear writhing in my chest.

“What do we do now?” I whispered, finding myself beginning to tremble, though not entirely from the unbroken cold of the cave. I had privately hoped I would never be left in this dark place with no signs of light ever again, yet here I stood, back where it had all begun. “Chrysanth… Atlas. They both took off,” I continued, feeling fear beginning to set in deeper. “Our camp is gone… everything is gone. Everyone is gone.” 

I heard Winter fumble around in the dark for a moment, then the flap of fabric as she wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, hugging me gently. “It’ll be okay, Elysia. It’s dark right now, I know, but we’re still together - and those two didn’t leave us for dead. We know where to meet if we get separated, and it was safer if we split up. Just stay with me - we’ll be through this soon.”

She’d said the same thing back outside, but it hadn’t quite sunk in then - hadn’t quite sunk in that she had risked everything to get both me and our home to safety; any other Bishop wouldn’t have hesitated, and she surely knew that. I wondered: if it came down to me and I had to do the same thing, would I be able to? At my core, I wanted to believe that I could, but I had never thought of myself as courageous or selfless. I was too absentminded, too prone to panic, I had always thought. 

And yet that hadn’t stopped me from defying Lisben only minutes ago. Where, exactly, had I found that strength? Compared to that of the others’, his punishment would have been a kindness, and my life would be simple once again. Yet I didn't want any of that, not even in what-ifs and fantasies. I had discovered something, not only in Winter but in every person I crossed paths with, that had captured me. But then, I had been “captured” before, in Dema, by Lisben. What made this any different?

I was so lost in my own thoughts that I only realized as I stumbled over a jutting stone that I was walking, led along by Winter in utter darkness. Yet again, she was my only guide as we trudged deep beneath Dema, bound for places I didn't know - and though I still didn’t know what lay ahead, I felt much less fearful. This deep, dark place belonged to the Banditos, and that meant it was mine, too.

We passed by a faint light that I realized must be the passage into Keons’ district we'd escaped through months ago, but Winter didn't hesitate as she took a turn and continued forward. 

“Winter, why don't you ever have a torch?” I wondered as the last of the light receded behind us, our surroundings completely dark once more. 

I could imagine her confident smile and the shake of her head as she answered, “I don't need one, that's why.” But then she slowed her pace a little and sighed, her voice suddenly weighted. “True story, Chrysanth noticed I had a knack for finding my way around down here early on, and told me I’d be “most useful” as a guide. For all the time I’ve spent down here carrying supplies, showing escapees the way, or just wandering around with my thoughts, I really  _ don’t  _ need to see, but I wonder how much of that is just because Chrysanth said that, all those years back, and I went along with it because it was the only approval he ever showed."

She sounded so troubled that I fished for something to lighten the mood and wound up saying, “he told me I was too  _ old  _ to find joy in a sunrise once.”

Winter sputtered with laughter seemingly at the sheer unexpected nature of my words, but it only lasted for a moment before she sighed again, so I nudged her gently as an invitation to speak what was on her mind. “It just… kind of stings to know him, sometimes, I guess,” she mused after a few moments. “Atlas must feel even worse, knowing that if it came down to it, Chrysanth would die for the cause sooner than live for it.”

Though I had seen enough today to know she was quite possibly right, puzzlingly enough the prospect didn’t seem quite so bitter to me. Perhaps because I understood him differently, but one thing was certain - him living for the Banditos  _ did _ have a much greater value than him dying for them. Surely, Chrysanth knew that, but covered it up with his self-centered, brusque behaviour that I had come to actually find endearing. Either way, I didn’t express my disagreement, because she was right - if Atlas thought the same thing, it  _ would  _ hurt.

“I don’t know,” I mused finally, after I thought I had settled on my own feelings for it all. “Everyone has their own way of showing they care, but he  _ does  _ care. And, really, it’s probably none of our business to be talking about them like this.”

“Like they don’t talk about  _ us  _ behind our backs!” Winter scoffed, but her voice turned gentler, teasing, as she added, “but - you’re probably right. How morally correct of you. Better than the rest of us, anyways.”

“I think that might be a district thing.” Pausing a beat, I quickly added, “not that it really means anything to anyone out here, but - you know.”

Winter gave the smallest groan, like a noise of surrender, admitting, “we get defensive, especially Chrysanth and I, about how our Bishop reflects on us, but… I mean, of course it  _ does _ mean something. Bishops shape us - I don’t know about you, but Sacarver had more of a voice in my childhood than my own parents did. But most of us don’t want to admit it.”

“Lisben, too,” I agreed quietly in response to her own confession. 

I didn’t say anything after, though, so to fill the silence Winter went on. “Trying to totally abandon your past in Dema just leaves you empty in Trench - I know that. And being empty just makes you long for something to go back to, even if it isn’t there. It’s… dangerous.”

I nodded, then offered a soft “yeah” of agreement after reminding myself Winter still couldn’t see me in the slightest. We didn’t keep trying to force conversation past that, plodding on through the dark for so long that the routine of putting one foot in front of the other in the void became somewhat hypnotic.

The darkness finally broke, light shining in from a wide fissure in the thick stone above as well as from an apparent opening up ahead; the wide hollow saw enough sun to boast thin foliage and moss creeping over the stone, and a small trickle of water flowed through, vanishing into the dark down a different tunnel. Most notable, though, was the presence of a tent already standing at the dead remnants of a fire; another Bandito camp, already established, curiously secluded.

Winter seemed at ease as she approached it, so I followed, soon catching sight of a cart tucked away against the tent, piled high with things I recognized as Chrysanth’s hoard of assorted notes and trinkets, most notably the red robe draped over it all, like it was the last thing he’d grabbed and thrown on before he took it.

“Obviously they beat us here,” I mused, wandering over to run the red cloth of the robe between my fingers, “but where are they now?”

Winter didn’t answer, instead setting down our bundle and setting out the poles of our tent to begin setting it up a little ways away, seeming more at ease than she had been since she jostled me awake that morning. I tried to calm myself by the sight of her, but with nothing to do, my troubled thoughts didn’t take long to pull me under. 

Even when I gave my full focus to the task of sorting it out, I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around Lisben’s actions. If it had been intended to be an ambush, why hadn’t he tried harder to stall us? If he had help coming, there was no way he would let someone like Chrysanth - or Winter - just slip away. For that matter, how did he know Atlas’ name? Why had he made no move to use force, if it was so common among the Bishops? Tangled up in all the thoughts, I sank down by the logs by the fire that offered a makeshift place to sit and drooped over, heavied. Without actually making any conscious decision to close my eyes and get some rest, darkness fell over me.

  
  
  
  


Unlike the last dream I’d had of simply waking up in Dema, I immediately knew this time upon gaining awareness of my surroundings that I definitely wasn't in the real world. This was mostly due to the impossibility of my perspective, so high above the city that low clouds hung about me like a fog, the buildings below looking tiny and distant. 

I was above even the walls, I soon realized, atop what had to be the tallest structure in Dema. For a time I let myself take in the sight of the colorless, desolate city below; from this far away all that it lacked was painfully clear, the unbroken grey looking exceptionally empty and uninviting under a layer of snow that still fell around me. 

A loud flap of wings dragged my attention away from the city below and I turned swiftly around, unprepared for the sight that would meet me. 

I had seen a dead body exactly once before in my life, that of someone who had fallen severely ill and gone swiftly - my mother, several years ago. Watchers had taken her away quietly. That was no preparation for the droves of half picked apart corpses scattered across the flat top of the tower, or the glossy, soulless eyes of a hundred vultures staring back at me, knowing that I did not belong. I reeled away with such revulsion and terror that I felt no ground beneath my feet, and with the air already startled from my lungs, it was impossible to scream as I fell. 

When I was young I had been told by a man long since Glorified that people who jumped from the walls of Dema fell so far and so fast that they felt no pain when they hit the ground. So I closed my eyes.

Seconds later, I caught myself with my hands, hitting the floor with no force than if I'd stumbled and fallen from a standing position, my eyes flashing open to unexpected darkness. Somehow, I knew in my gut where I was before I sat up and pushed myself up slowly, swiveling to look up the aisle between stone seats to the altar where, as I had somehow known already, Lisben stood waiting.

I took my time rising to my feet, still trying to calm my racing heart after the fright I had just faced, looking around the offputting darkness of the chapel - in all my countless days, brought here as a child and attending loyally as I grew, I had never once seen the neon altar bereft of light the way it was now. It had never occurred to me that it could be turned off at all. 

Though unsteady, I staggered my way up the aisle, touching my hand to the cool glass of the light. For the longest time it had been something to respect, even deify - but now, with all illumination gone from within, I could only look upon it as a symbol of death and nothing more.

I expected Lisben to break the silence before long, but he said nothing at all, gazing at me with sorrow potent enough to bowl me over at any other time - but in this moment I felt resolute. Immovable. Invincible. And though I knew it was a delusion, I held onto it steadfastly. 

“Don't you ever question yourself?” I murmured when the question came to me, letting my hand fall away from the monument and looking to where the silent Bishop stood. “Even knowing the truth about the so-called wasteland, the Banditos… you never hesitate to lie to us. To convince us we have to be afraid of what's beyond not only Dema’s walls, but your own district’s. Don't you ever think that you're making the wrong decision?”

Rather than looking at me, Lisben studied the black paint smeared over his hands briefly before firmly answering, “those thoughts have no place in the mind of a Bishop.” He lacked the melancholy I knew him for and the severity he'd shown in Trench alike. It was a rehearsed answer, if only rehearsed to himself.

“And what about your mind as a human being?” As I kept pushing, I ascended the last step between Lisben and I, standing level with him. 

My Bishop seemed truly stunned by this question, and even behind his veil I could sense his uncertainty, his disquieted search for an answer that was usually simple unfolding between us. The silence that followed seemed agonizingly long, and he finally turned away from me before he spoke.

“I had no cause to question what I do is right until… certain recent events,” he sounded more like himself now, the hefty sadness in his voice plain to me.

“Me leaving?” I questioned, tilting my head. “So, it’s true. You’ve really never had another citizen flee your district.”

“Many, many, many come to me to confess that they are considering.” Lisben answered more swiftly this time, though no less heavily. “And I set them free of those thoughts; free them from their fate should they choose to leave this place’s walls. Such is necessary to uphold-”

Unexpectedly, I felt a surge of anger at the predetermined answers he reverted to, interrupting him before he could go on to talk about the good of Dema, the dictations of Vialism - all things I knew all too well. “Their fate here is no better!” I snapped, then paused, thrown off balance by my own ferocity. “How can you be  _ so  _ sure of yourself when you know it’s all a lie? You already know all these things I’ve learned and more, so how can you even live with yourself?”

Though I wasn’t quite yelling, something about the tone and volume of my own voice frightened me, but I couldn’t stop now. “Forget all that,” I growled, overwriting all my previous demands. “I _ know  _ this isn’t just a dream - you opened a line to me for a reason. You want to speak to me - so, what is that reason? What do you think you have to tell me, now that you’re no longer my Bishop? What do you think you can say to me without that authority, without your Vialist rules hanging over us?”

Out of breath and trembling in fearful anticipation of the answer to my own demand, I forced myself to stand strong as Lisben stepped closer to me, shifting his hood back farther on his head and pulling the veil he wore for rites off in the same motion. Keeping a careful eye on his hands, prepared to bolt if they came near me, I braced.

“I know that I have nothing to say to you right now, my child,” he admitted, and I struggled not to recoil from the designation he gave me even now. “Rather, I have my own questions that I do not have answers to. Questions such as: why did you leave, Elysia? Why did you not stay here, under my care, with people you have known your whole life? This world is safe, it is stable. Why did you need to flee from it? Have I not been kind? Have I not taken care of you?”

The fear I felt at all his questions swallowed me whole in a second and I backed away from him, almost falling backwards down the stairs as forgot where to place my feet to descend gracefully. All my doubts said back to me by a man I had once assumed had an answer for all things left me in blind terror, my jaw locking so tightly I couldn’t speak even if I had one word to say. 

I thought I might remain there forever, petrified into a statue in the centre of the chapel, if not for sunlight breaking through from outside, shining a sliver of yellow light through a narrow, distant seeming window. It fell on me with the gentle warmth of a low, calm fire, or the embrace of someone who had waited for me to return. A little piece of all I felt in Trench, breaking into this dark, heatless place. And things became clear for a moment; became… okay.

“I don’t know why I left,” I rasped in a voice that started out weak, barely audible. “All I knew is that it was necessary. And now these people -  _ my  _ people,  _ my  _ Banditos - are all that matter to me, and I’ll go with them to the very ends of Trench if that’s what I have to do. Maybe there are more questions than answers - maybe there always will be - but there is no question in my mind that these lives in the shadows are my blood.”

Lisben said nothing at all, looking at me with unreadable pallid blue eyes that seemed somehow as lifeless as the stone structure around us in that moment. Then he inclined his head slightly, a motion of surrender, and the faintest of smiles showed on his face for a fleeting second. 

“That is as good a response as any,” he said simply, softly. “But if you discover an answer to my questions, I would very much like to hear what you have to say - but I see we both have many things to reflect upon, first. Until then, return to the waking, my child. I will see you again.”


	7. peace will win, fear will lose

I awoke slowly to the disturbance of the fire in front of me being shifted around and built up by a man I took a second to recognize for two reasons - first, the yellow bandanna concealing most of his face, and, secondly, the uncharacteristic cold bitterness in his near-black eyes. When I sat up to ask him what was wrong, still trying to shake off grogginess, a pillow that someone had apparently placed under my head fell, attracting Atlas’s attention - by the time I was alert enough to speak, the darkness in his visage had been crushed down, though he didn’t pull down his bandana to offer me his usual dimpled grin. He looked too… drained.

“You were out like a  _ light, _ ” he remarked, forcibly upbeat. “Didn’t even twitch when Chrysanth and I got back. Or when we set up camp, or-”

“Atlas, what’s on your mind?” I blurted, not caring for once that I was being rude by interrupting.

He looked stunned for a split second, then turned away from me; a single, vaguely muffled “ha,” was his only answer at first, and the dancing light of the fire caught tears glazing over his eyes. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know whatever could weigh his spirit down so heavily, but he was already answering, voice ever-so-slightly hoarse.

“You know. Just about lost my entire world back there, but it’s no big deal.” Pushing his palms against his eyes, he concealed his entire face from my view as he went on. “I feel like I’m literally the only stable person out here right now. Chrysanth jumping at the chance to clash with Lisben like - like… What did he think he was gonna do, fist fight a Bishop? It messed me up, man.”

At any other time I might’ve laughed at the mental image of Chrysanth squaring up to Lisben, but in the context it was heartbreaking rather than amusing. “It’s okay,” I managed, hoping I sounded at least a little comforting. “We’re all here. We all got away. Right?”

“This time!” Atlas erupted, his hands dropping from his face to land on the log he sat on at either side with force. For a moment he stared at me, seeming stunned by his own outburst - and, in the meantime, I was just surprised that I had managed not to flinch. Without thinking, I moved close enough to put my hand lightly on his shoulder. At first he tensed, but only for a second before the rage fell out of him and he drooped, closing his eyes. 

“Sometimes I forget how easy it’d be to lose him,” he muttered so lowly that I had to lean in to hear him. “Or Winter. We’re all just one slip away from being vulture food.”

The phrase unexpectedly sent me reeling away from Atlas like he’d scalded me, images of what I’d seen in my nightmare atop the tower in Dema thrust into my mind with horrid clarity before I could prepare for it. Involuntarily retching, I wrapped both arms around my midsection and tried to force the image from my mind, but it only seemed to become more burned in the harder I tried. I could feel myself beginning to shake, the impression that there was no escape growing up from my gut, starting to wrap around me like foliage.

The feeling of both of Atlas’ hands holding onto my arms pulled me back to the moment I was in, and though his grip was almost painful, his eyes were full of concern, his own weights forgotten for the moment. Reflexively, I reached up to guide his hands away from me and nodded slowly, swallowing hard as I forced myself to find words for the unthinkable.

“I… saw Lisben again, in my dream.” Tremulously, I began the recounting. “But first I started out on top of the tallest tower at the centre of Dema - I think that’s where I was in my first dream, too, at the end, now that I got another look. But it was so high, higher than the walls, and…” pausing, I took a moment to wet my lips, my mouth seeming to fight me with every word as it went dry. “V-vultures, and… people… being eaten. I wanted to get away from it so badly that I… fell.” the rest of the details came out in pieces and I avoided looking at Atlas as he leaned back a little, seeming to pale in the dim light of the fire.

Then, he stood and was gone, disappearing into the tent nearest the fire, the one that had already stood alone when Winter and I had stumbled out of the dark tunnels. 

Confusedly, I only waited, admittedly also in part of the fact I felt almost paralyzed, unable to move even if I wanted to. In the meantime, I looked around at the darkness; night had fallen while I slept, shadows filling the hollowed out space beyond the failing light of the fire. Unlike the camp I’d spent a handful of months at, the moon and starlight didn’t touch this place, leaving it feeling empty yet enclosed. 

Shaking my head, trying to fight off yet another anxious thought, I reminded myself that I had hated everything about our mountainside home initially, too - I would eventually warm up to this new settlement. 

When Atlas emerged from the nearby tent with an unexpected familiar face in tow, I couldn’t stop myself from springing up and throwing my arms around him, though exclaiming “Clancy!” to warn him before I did so. He still staggered a bit at the unexpected assault, but half-heartedly embraced me back with one arm. 

Embarrassedly, I withdrew, reminding myself that I had really only ever met this man once before and had no business being quite so thrilled to see him.

Seeing me pull away, humiliated, Clancy gave a nonchalant shrug and remarked, sarcastically, “it’s okay, I’m awesome, I have that effect on people.” There was no genuine ego or mocking behind his words, just a small, wry smirk. My abashedness quickly passed with this reception and I backed away, sitting by the fire where I had awoken. 

“This is where you live, then?” I asked as he sat across from me, locking eyes deliberately with Atlas before giving his head a tilt towards the tent that Chrysanth and Atlas must have set up while I slept; the other man stumbled for a second, giving me one last concerned glance before disappearing into his tent, leaving Clancy and I alone with the sound of the fire crackling and shifting. 

He didn’t say anything to me for some time, admittedly still not looking fully awake after what I realized was probably an unpleasant and sudden awakening. All the while that we sat without speaking, though, his hands were in motion, twirling his wedding band repeatedly around his finger as he gazed past me, distant, leaving me to wonder why Atlas had dumped me on him at all. While I waited for said question to be answered, though, I studied Clancy.

He looked quite different than he had back on the night of the Assemblage: no green jumpsuit marked by tape donned, instead just plain grey Dema pants and a white T-shirt, and his hair had grown out from being shaved short identical to how Chrysanth kept it. But mostly it was a look in his eyes, like he was somewhere else and not actually sitting with me, that felt amiss. All things considered this was rather what I imagined he might have looked like back in Dema, down to the vacancy in his eyes. 

“So, where’s Gwyn?” I said after so long had passed that I had begun to think Atlas had just awoken him to mind the fire and to get rid of me. 

Clancy blinked and snapped his attention back to me at the question, smiling a little at the mere mention of her. “She’s in Dema right now,” he replied casually, and I felt a cold shock strike me in the midsection.

“What, like-” I began, then stopped, unable to finish my sentence and instead concluding with a “smearing” gesture with both hands.

Startling a little, he shook his head. “Jeez! No.” Hesitating, he tilted his head slightly, brow furrowing in thought. “I guess nobody ever told you, and why would they, I guess. Gwyn spends most of her time in the city smuggling food out of Sacarver’s. She kind of runs that whole line from Trench.”

The information struck me as a little odd, though I had already come to the conclusion on my own that a vast majority of our rations and supplies came from Dema itself. “That seems… really dangerous,” I muttered, carefully. “Especially to be doing that right under  _ Sacarver’s _ nose of all Bishops.”

Clancy shook his head in response, unexpectedly nonchalant. “Bishops all have citizens they’re soft on. Trust me, you don’t have to be worried about her. Sacarver’s about as likely to hurt her as Lisben is to hurt you.”

I wanted to launch into a denial at the words immediately, but after the unfoldings in the last several hours, his words clearly had some truth to them, so I instead carefully pointed out, “depending on who’s perspective you’re looking from, Lisben is soft to  _ all  _ his people.”

“Yeeeah… Keons, too,” Clancy agreed, but as he said this he gripped his throat, his voice sounding strangled. “But that’s never stopped him from trying to haul people back to Dema like pieces of property if other methods don’t pan out.”

My stomach flipped over and I looked away, feeling oddly stung. Winter and the others behaved as though they had never seen Lisben venture into the wastelands looking for someone before; was the fact he’d surrendered so easily really a sign he was fond of me, or that he no longer cared if I died out here? I would probably never have an answer.

“Atlas told me you saw the Tower.” Whiplash slammed me back into the topic that had temporarily been pushed back into my mind as Clancy changed gears, leaning toward me slightly, studying me with eyes that looked golden in the fire’s light.

_ The Tower.  _ There were nine, in actuality, at the centre of Dema, but one in particular was by far the highest, the most notable landmark of the colorless city - yet we were hushed by Lisben whenever we spoke of it, and even after spending my entire lifetime in its shadow, I knew so little about it that I didn’t know how to respond to Clancy, exactly, except maybe to repeat what I had already said to Atlas. Before tonight, I hadn’t even thought to put two and two together to understand why the vultures so heavily favoured the towering structure. Now, I rather wished I could forget it again.

“I…” faltering, not wanting to fall into a panic as deep as I had about it earlier, I took a deep breath. “I saw the top,” I finished, finally, grabbing the blanket that slumped beneath me to hug it around my shoulders. 

Clancy’s expression turned grave and he looked into the flames beneath us for a moment before glancing back up at me. “Do Lisben’s know that omen? That nightmare - it’s an omen of death.” His voice cracked with the final words and fear glimmered in his avoidant eyes. “I’ve seen it happen, again and again - people who have nightmares of the Tower of Silence, even Banditos, appeal to their Bishops to be smeared. And then they’re gone.”

“...Whether it’s prophetic, psychological, or a Bishop’s trick - I can’t say. But it’s a mark of death, should they stay in Trench or Dema.”

A colder yet colder feeling took me over with every passing word, until even the dancing embers before me gave off no warmth and I began to tremble uncontrollably. If this were Chrysanth, I’d take him for being overdramatic - if it was anyone else, I simply wouldn’t believe them. But Clancy’s soft-spoken, tremulous confession rang through me as truthful, even as I tried to claw my way away from it.

“It can’t be everyone,” I croaked at last, my throat so tight with fear I almost choked on the words.

Clancy studied me for a moment, pursing his lips and swallowing as though holding back tears of his own, then he shook his head. “I can’t lie to you. I’ve seen it happen more times than I could make myself count, both with Banditos and Keons’ people themselves - I’ve only ever heard of one exception. One, ever. And you’re talking to him right now.”

Uncertain, I studied Clancy’s eyes, haunted and vacant at this moment as he looked away from me, off into the darkness around us. He had no reason to scare me with a made-up tale of doom, but it all seemed too daunting and… convenient. Suspicion crept up.

“If they’ve all died but you, then you must know what makes the difference - what did you do to avoid it happening?” I knew I sounded full of doubt, unsympathetic. “I- ...I don’t want to die,” I added, not sure if the pathetic admission made me come across better or worse.

To my surprise, Clancy seemed more puzzled than anything, looking as though he was trying to remember. “I… don’t know how to summarize that for you. I started having ‘em young, maybe sixteen. I told anyone who would listen, and started to realize that I was far from alone. But I watched them all go.” He went quiet for a moment, and I let him.

“I don’t know - in Dema, it was always day-to-day. I went on knowing that I didn’t have to  _ do  _ anything to stay alive, and the sun would come up, and nightmares were just nightmares - all that. But… Keons’ residents have a way of just drifting off into the grey. And then they just never find their way back. I knew I had to leave or I would end up like that eventually.”

Disquieted, I bundled up the blanket around my shoulders into my fists. I had never known just what to make of Keons and his people, but the “grey” Clancy mentioned sounded all too familiar; I’d seen people around me “drift away” similarly all my life. 

“Is that what’s going to happen to me?” I wondered, not really expecting Clancy to have any sort of response for me. Before the silence between us could extend terribly long, though, a more curious and harmless question occurred to me and I gravitated towards it as a distraction from the current, frankly mortifying, topic.

“I always thought Keons was was probably  _ most  _ like Lisben’s, so… does Keons ever show up in your dreams?” 

Unexpectedly, Clancy suddenly sat up straighter, eyebrows raising. “You’ve been dreaming about Lisben?”

“More than just… dreams. He’s actually talking to me - asking questions, like why I left, and why I won’t go back. He seemed…  _ genuinely  _ sad - and confused. Of course, everything he does is built on lies, so I don’t really trust it, but…” Trailing off, I tilted my head at Clancy.

“A Bishop… asking  _ you _ … for answers,” he mused, drawn out. “That’s new.”

“I’m full of surprises, apparently,” I answered back sarcastically, slouching. “So that’s a “no,” then?”

“Well, y’see, Keons doesn’t really, uh, like me, so he wouldn’t go through the trouble, but, ah-” Clancy began, forcing himself to sound upbeat through clenched teeth. “I’ve bounced back and forth between Trench and Dema enough times to know Bishops are capable of disguising their intentions in a lot of ways - but make no mistake, Lisben’s main goal is to put you on top of that tower in the end, no matter how harmless he might seem right now.”

He didn’t give me much opportunity to retaliate or even process before raising his eyebrows and adding, “but… him showing up like that. Man. Yeah, it’s interesting. Over the years, I don’t think anyone’s ever mentioned to me seeing their Bishop  _ in _ a Tower nightmare. I wonder what it means. Probably nothing, but…” Hesitating, he shrugged, dryly adding, “well, you just said you're full of surprises.”

Seemingly done speaking on the topic of Lisben, Clancy piled a few smaller branches onto the fire before glancing back towards the tent Atlas had disappeared into. “Hey… It’s good that you told someone. For me at least, that was step one to staying alive. You’re on the right track.”

His words weren’t exactly a reassurance, but they calmed me at least enough that I could keep my head above the panicked thoughts and I hunkered down with my blanket and pillow once again, not expecting to fall back asleep, though I did realize I must have dozed off for awhile, for the next time I opened my eyes, dawn light had begun to filter in - but that wasn’t what had awoken me.

Instead, it was Chrysanth’s voice, shouting from his tent something along the lines of, “by now you should know me better than that!”

I sat up straight just in time to see Chrysanth storming out of his tent, not acknowledging Clancy or I in the slightest as he grabbed his taped-up jacket off where it sat on a log and throwing it on as he passed by us, heading straight outside into daylight. Atlas emerged immediately after, looking at both of us self-consciously before pointing off after Chrysanth, muttering, “I gotta…” but never finishing the sentence.

Winter stuck her head out of our tent to investigate the noise a second later and that seemed to be Atlas’ last push to depart, muttering an apology to his audience in general before following after Chrysanth. 

“Might as well get used to that,” Winter mumbled as she trudged over to join us by the fire, hair mussed from sleep. “Close quarters, and you really gave Chrysanth something to yell about yesterday.”

“Me?” I gawked, but my surprise quickly turned to indignant anger. “All  _ I  _ did was not get captured by my Bishop, but screw me I guess.” Winter opened her mouth to retaliate, but for once I was quicker than she was, though I attributed that to the fact she wasn’t fully awake yet. “You’re the one who decided to play hero and go back for our things.”

Winter wasn’t exactly a calm, collected person at the best of times, but I realized I hadn't been the direct target of her anger in quite some time as she glared coolly at me, crossing her arms over her chest and tilting her head condescendingly. “Oh, so you’d rather I left our whole camp behind right at the beginning of winter, so that we could both freeze to death? Great idea. Wish I’d done that.”

“Well - no!” I said back quickly, flustered. “But it’s still not  _ my  _ fault they’re fighting!” Instinctively, I looked to the only other person present for backup, but Clancy seemed to be either intensely dissociating or trying very hard to be unaware of the going-ons right in front of him, and I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to get dragged into what I had already realized was a pointless verbal skirmish. 

“It’s - it’s Lisben’s fault!” I thought it was a good enough recovery, but Winter curled her lip, hostile, managing to look every bit as antagonistic as she had the first time we’d met, as she taunted me for my loyalty to Dema.

“Oh, so  _ now  _ you’ll actually blame him instead of kissing the ground that he walks on? And all it took was for him to almost kill all of us!” 

Genuinely stung by her words, the fight drained out of me and I turned sharply away, knowing there was no way she would miss the tears welling up in my eyes. Enough, I decided, this wouldn’t escalate any farther. Standing up, feigning calmness, I turned and began to walk back towards the tunnels, taking the path that the creek followed rather than the way we had come from yesterday, even though I didn’t know where I was going - I wasn’t going to turn back now.

I couldn’t go very far before darkness fell over me and I had to stop, fearing accidentally wandering down a fork in the path and becoming lost. My eyes eventually adjusted just enough that I was able to find a misshapen boulder to sit on and allow myself to cry out the feelings congesting my chest. 

It had become far too much far too quickly as it so often seemed to in Trench. But, I thought, it was better that way than drifting away into a fog without even noticing and never finding my way back - if that really was my fate in Dema. 

I didn’t intend to ever return to know for certain. 


	8. meaning, maybe defeating them could be the beginning of your meaning, friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one of the things i really enjoyed when i was conceptualizing this little project was imagining these individuals as characters in a world where music doesnt play a role in their lives 
> 
> it was nice for me in a way to take a few concepts and think about them in a different medium. i was proud of this chapter at the time so i hope you may find it even 1% as interesting as i did

I had quieted by the time someone came to find me, almost ready to make my way back to camp on my own. When I saw the flicker of fire soften the dark of my surroundings I knew it wasn’t Winter, but still I was surprised to see Clancy appear, a backpack slung over his shoulder and a torch held aloft. When he saw me and startled, though, I realized quickly that he  _ hadn’t  _ come looking for me at all. It didn’t matter much either way. 

I could go back whenever I pleased. The world had no plans for me. 

“How’s Winter?” I asked simply as he drew closer, shedding torchlight on my probably tear-streaked face. 

He shook his head in response, frowning. “Not sure. She ran off not long after you, but she’s most likely just working on supply runs or something.”

“And the other two?” I ventured, though they were more of an afterthought at this point.

“Ah, they’ll be fine,” Clancy scoffed, waving a hand through the air. “This was nothing compared to some of the stuff they’ve already been though.” Pausing, he took a few steps until he passed me, then turned back, tilting his head. “What about you?”

Instinctively, I looked away. How was I supposed to feel with a death omen hanging over my head and the peace of the only people I had to lean on rather broken at the moment? Feeling ready to break down over it all over again, I tried to tuck my chin into the collar of my jumpsuit, sniffling. “...Fine.”

“Well, I’m gonna ignore the fact  _ that’s  _ a blatant lie,” Clancy commented cheekily, but softened a second later. “Look - you want to be alone, I’ll leave. You want to go back to camp, I’ll walk you. You wanna stay here and pout - whatever. Just tell me.”

Wiping at my eyes with my already damp sleeves, I forced as deep of a breath as I could manage. “I think I’m just going to… sit here a little longer,” I said eventually, shifting uncomfortably. I knew I could find my way back, but there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that seemed to warn me that being alone perhaps wasn’t the best idea at the moment. “Or…” I added, but trailed off, watching as Clancy glanced back in the direction he was headed in. “Where are you headed?”

Clancy paused a moment, his hesitance clear to me, then he turned to face me fully, shifting his weight back and forth. “Do you wanna see something kinda cool?” he offered, seemingly out of nowhere. When I only looked at him, perplexed, he gestured with his head in the direction he was going. “C’mon. I want to show you.”

Admittedly not entirely eager to be dragged off somewhere unfamiliar so early in the day and still so full of turmoil, I almost refused. But this was  _ Clancy. _ That, and I had no desire to go back to camp and stay there alone for goodness knows how long until someone returned, probably in a bad mood and not wanting to see me anyways. So I stood, following alongside Clancy as he began to walk.

“You hungry?” He asked after we’d walked a few paces, already stopping to take his backpack off and fishing around in it. He’d been there to see me storm off without eating, so I supposed he knew the answer. In a second he produced a parchment-wrapped mystery and presented it to me, beaming. “Oatmeal chocolate chip.”

“Cookies.” I said the word in disbelief. I hadn’t seen an actual baked good aside from the staple Dema bread in months. Or chocolate.

“Yeah! Gwyn brought them for you guys since she knew you’d be showing up soon,” he explained with a joyous, inward smile. Something about his happiness managed to spread to me and I gladly took one, wolfing it down in a few ungraceful bites.

“They’re amazing,” I announced needlessly, and Clancy held the pile out for me to take another one, so I did, then he tucked the bundle away. “You know, I think this is actually the secret to how you avoided the Tower nightmare - Gywn’s baking.” It was supposed to be a joke, but instead of laughing along, Clancy nodded.

“I mean, Gywn in general,” he confessed, turning and walking away without me, scuffing his feet across the ground. “I always sort of thought love is temporary and that everyone goes away, but Gywn’s… she’s…” He stopped, but I nodded - he didn’t need to say anything else. But he did, taking a turn that I didn’t quite expect.

“But all your meaning can’t come from another person - or even just from yourself, really. I think it all comes together in pieces, but that cohesion can’t exist unless you have something… bigger than yourself,” he paused for a moment from his words that left me stunned, giving me a look as if making sure I was following. “But… yeah. It’s a cliche, but she is definitely the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

I smiled a bit as his words wrapped back around to Gywn in the end, but the expression quickly faded and we walked on in silence for a moment before he softly and sheepishly muttered, “sorry.”

“No, it’s totally okay, I-I just…” I blurted, then frowned, not sure how to explain exactly what was on my mind. “I don’t know. I had this stupid idea about what “true love” looks like, but it’s Dema’s idea, and it involves being willing to die for each other, or dying  _ together,  _ and that’s not… it’s not right.”

Clancy said nothing in response, leaving me to struggle through the rest of the thought. “Like - Chrysanth and Atlas! They’re in love, right?” Clancy only gave me a bewildered look in response, so I just continued. “But they’re such different people, and they fight and argue. And you and Gywn are  _ perfect  _ for each other, but you’re here living away from her, even though you’re married, it’s…” 

“We’re not perfect,” Clancy interjected mildly, “and we definitely fight, too.”

“Gah, I just-!” The man beside me jumped a little as my risen, frustrated voice echoed down the dark stone tunnel. “Is there literally nothing that Dema HASN’T poisoned for me? Anything I won’t have to take back and straighten out?”

I saw Clancy shake a little with silent laughter, nodding his head in my peripheral vision before he quietly responded, “I’ll save you some time - Dema is wrong about pretty much every single thing.” He didn’t hesitate with that answer, but then he added, “sorry.”

“You apologize too much for things you don’t need to,” I said, much gentler than my voice had been seconds ago, and Clancy only nodded as if to say, “I know,” looking down at his feet now as we walked. 

Normally, treks through the tunnels took quite some time, yet another reason why I had been reluctant to tag along, but we rounded a corner to what could only be our destination after a mere few more minutes of walking. 

I stopped so abruptly that I nearly lost balance of the sight that met me, staring around in wonder. I knew that throughout the Bandito tunnels lay larger caverns hidden in the earth, but the one I faced now infantilized them all, bigger even than the inside of any building I could remember being in, all illuminated softly by the glow of warm lamps overhead and torch sconces set in wood pillars that I realized must support the ceiling above.

“What is this place?” I wondered, awed.

“A really big cave,” Clancy answered me teasingly, then began to walk off ahead, leaving me to roll my eyes and follow after, swivelling my head to take in every direction to take in the warm, welcoming ‘really big cave.’

Even just upon entering I saw at least a dozen more of our own, scattered about in small groups; some, I had seen before, finally giving me an answer regarding where many familiar faces had disappeared to, though a few were new faces to me. They all seemed to pay me no mind, though a few of them waved to Clancy or called greetings over to him. 

After heading a few metres into the “room,” Clancy veered off towards the far wall; I followed more slowly, stopping for a moment as I passed a misshapen stack of books - I hadn’t seen any of those since leaving Dema, either, and even then trying to find anything that wasn’t a printed version of the Vialist Guidelines was a challenge in itself. Even from the brief look, though, I could tell from the variation of sizes and shapes of the spines that this collection certainly wasn’t simply that. Though tempted to move in for a better look, I pulled my attention away to search for Clancy.

Instead, I immediately found my gaze pulled passed where he stood, to the cave walls behind him instead, all traces of higher thought leaving me behind momentarily. Illuminated in warm light, stretching in both directions as far as I could see, were images immortalized on the stone walls, painted in reds, blues and yellows. Instantly flung back to my long trek from Dema to Trench, I remembered seeing traces of these same colors just beyond the torchlight. 

Then, I had never thought to ask who had left the messages behind, but now as the answer became clear to me I felt an odd sense of catharsis. One less question without an answer lurking in the back of my mind.

“All this…” I began, taking a large step back for more perspective. “Was you? The ones in the tunnels from Keons’, too?”

Clancy ducked his head a little, nodding. “Yeah… pretty cool, right?” There was a certain self-effacing manner to the way he tucked his arms behind his back and looked away from me that made me realize that although hundreds of Banditos passed through here and saw these paintings - though there had to be years of dedication just from what I could see standing here - he wasn’t sure at all if I would like it or even  _ care _ .

This was the culmination of his efforts for just how long only he knew - the sheer vulnerability of him standing there waiting for me to speak occurred to me and I felt an indescribable pressure to find something worthwhile to say. Holding my tongue, I pivoted to meander down the length of the wall a little ways until I came upon something new.

Like with the symbol I’d come to know was a loose map of the tunnels, this one instilled in me a sense that I had seen it before or ought to know what it was, but I couldn’t quite place why the nine circles, each filled with a unique pattern, felt as though I should be able to identify it. I stared at it for what I couldn’t help thinking was a little too long before I finally tentatively craned my neck to look at Clancy.

Apparently, my expression was quizzical enough that it was amusing, for he puffed with laughter for a second before catching himself. “What are there nine of?” He prompted, leading me like a schoolteacher might in the same situation.

“Bishops.... Districts,” I mused softly, mostly to myself, and Clancy gave me a small nod of confirmation. “So… what’s with the patterns?”

He did an abrupt 180 °, suddenly shaking his head, expression serious. “I’m not going to tell you that part. You can decide.”

More confused than when we’d started now, I looked back at the circles for a moment, then decided to move on, stopping with a stumble at the next composition. There was something very unsettling about this one; a faceless silhouette of a man, managing to have absolutely no distinguishing features aside from a red beanie on his head and one black hand held against his chest, palm open. As I gazed longer, my eyes were drawn to the gradient of black at his neck, all too familiar.

“What is this?” I muttered, unnerved, taking a small step back.

“First of all, that is clearly a person,” Clancy began, surprisingly exasperated, “so the question is  _ who  _ is he, not what.”

I waited for a moment before guiltily correcting myself with, “okay,  _ who  _ is this?”

“His name is Blurryface.”

I swore the cavern enclosing us went exceptionally quiet at the name and all I could do was stare back at the face where eyes belonged, feeling oddly paralyzed. Finally, I swallowed hard, wrapping my arms around myself.

“I don’t like him,” I announced bluntly, trying to order my feet to start walking again, but the signal didn’t seem to make its way down from my brain. “I’m sorry.”

To my surprise, he only shrugged. “I mean… he can’t hear you. As his creator, though,  _ I’m _ a little offended.” He turned to continue down our path, but I couldn’t move, still locked in a staring contest with “Blurryface” and his nonexistent eyes.

“Who is he?” I ventured when Clancy reluctantly meandered back to my side. After his quick assassination of my last deeper question, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but to my surprise he seemed rather pleased with himself, engaging me with that earnest sincerity of his that made him so enjoyable to be around.

“Well, I started thinking about what a Bishop might be like, if he was actually like me or you.” He started out seeming excited to explain, but then he sighed and deflated. “If Bishops were just someone we could stand on even ground with, or sit down and have a real conversation with… instead of an entity we can’t ever really  _ know. _ ”

I rubbed my hands up and down my arms as a chill overtook me, casting my stare back to Blurryface. It certainly explained why he made me feel so cornered and uneasy, if nothing else. “Does he… scare most people?” I ventured after another sizeable silence. 

Clancy paused, nodded. “Of course. Even me.” Then, he shrugged. “What he represents to me is so rooted in fear that it’s only natural. Some people  _ do  _ like him, and that’s fine too, but he and I have to keep a healthy distance from one another.”

“Why do you talk about him like he’s a real person, though?” I wondered, cringing at how interrogative and insensitive the question came across.

Clancy tilted his head towards me slightly, seeming almost confused. “Well, he came from something very real, even if it’s only up here,” he began, pointing to his temple, then let his hand drop. “And he represents something very,  _ very  _ real, even if nobody can see it.”

Falling face first into something that at least resembled an understanding, I nodded quickly. “Wow. Okay. I - you know, I just, I can’t believe how smart you are. Or… wise, I guess. I just love hearing your answers.”

Seemingly caught off guard by the praise, Clancy scoffed, shrugging. “Well, that’s awesome because I love hearing myself talk,” he quipped, though I had a feeling he wasn’t entirely joking - I didn’t mind, though.

“Seriously, though. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s smart the way you are,” I admitted, meandering away from Blurryface’s vicinity and down the hall.

“Ah, stop.” Waving a hand through the air like he was swatting away a fly, or my compliments, he followed after me. “Everyone has something to say that no one else could. It just happens that I’ve been trying to get better at telling these stories or portraying these feelings in some new way since - well, probably since before you were even born.”

For some reason the words winded me a bit and I widened my eyes, chuckling. “Right. Well, that sure puts it in perspective. You didn’t get this good at all this overnight.”

“Gah. I feel old now,” Clancy grumped, and I shook my head.

“You’re not old, I’m just an idiot baby,” I said, mostly to myself, walking further down the length of the cave. 

“...You know, by my age a significant percentage of people in Dema have already taken their lives.” The soft, broken words matching his voice came from nowhere and I found myself only able to gawk over at him, taking in the weight he held about him, the faint wrinkles from many days working under the sun around his eyes. He was quite possibly as old as my mother when she’d died years ago, but I had never stopped to think about it.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring things down,” he muttered, clearing his throat and looking away from me, off into the openness of the cavern rather than at the stone walls where his canvas lay. “But… you know. I thought I should say that, rather than pretend that reality is something that it’s not. I know how bad things are - I know there’s something wrong with this world, and I know that lying to other people about it is bad enough, but lying to yourself is far worse. To stop myself from crossing that line I just… Don't lie about it at all, anymore.” he paused, troubled lines appearing between his brows as he frowned pensively, seeming to rethink where his words were headed.

“I used to think I could fix Dema - maybe some naive part of me still believes that - but I think that’s an equally dangerous lie as pretending there’s nothing wrong. But even if I can’t fix it, I can still leave behind something more important than… this.” He gestured to himself with the end of his quiet, somber tangent, looking to the cave walls now. “So, I started literally leaving things behind, in hopes that it might mean something to anyone.”

Becoming uncomfortable at this point, I looked around for a reason to change the topic - luckily, my timing was just right as I arrived at a new painting and pretended to stare very intently at it. 

“Sorry. In case you can’t tell, I like being sad, probably a little too much. It’s the Keons influence.” Pausing, Clancy stepped closer to me, looking at the painting as well. “That’s Gwyn,” he said needlessly, as if I wouldn’t recognize her yellow-painted hair and distinctive blue eyes.

She was holding a butcher knife blade first to who I now knew to be Blurryface in this portrait, seemingly a threat. It was a bit of a twisted image to paint of someone he loved, perhaps, but it made me smile nonetheless, its meaning not lost on me. Seeing my expression, Clancy’s mood lightened slightly, too. 

“This one, I like.” It was probably obvious from my reaction, but I said it anyways, moving onto the next painting, and the next, carrying on without pause or feedback now, instead finding myself retreating into my own thoughts, wondering if any of these things would have meant anything to me only a few months ago before I had fled Dema. I likely wouldn’t have given any of it a second thought - not even Clancy’s heavy words about the obvious problems of Dema.

At some point I realized I’d stopped looking at my surroundings at all, and the room had grown narrower and dimmer as we continued onward, the lights becoming fewer and farther in between. I finally stopped only when I realized there was only darkness ahead, marking the end of this sanctuary. 

“You good?” Clancy ventured a couple seconds after I halted, staring vacantly into the tunnels ahead.

“Yeah, I just…” Even as I said the words, I felt my throat burning like I wanted to cry, though I wasn’t exactly sure what about. “I feel like there’s so much I still don’t understand, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to, now, thanks to that stupid nightmare.” Smearing away a tear that managed to escape my eye, I turned around to head back the way we’d come, though freezing immediately as I saw, on the cave wall opposite the one I’d been watching the whole way, an inconsistency. 

There were words scratched in white, secluded at the end of this place, hidden half in darkness, and they called me over immediately. As I closed in, I read them aloud to myself: “desperately yelling out there’s something else in this world that we need - it happens to be free.”

The quiet of the tunnel around us ate up my voice and I waited for an explanation that didn’t come. Clancy seemed to exclude words from everything he drew deliberately, so I was almost entirely certain already that this lone plea didn’t belong to him, though it seemed to cry out the same feelings.

“Is there a story behind this?” I wondered finally, timidly.

To my surprise, Clancy’s eyes went somewhere faraway, to a distant and dark place that I knew I couldn’t follow him to, leaving me with an uncertainty of whether or not I actually wanted the answer.

“This is pre-Banditos,” he said lowly, reaching up and running his index finger up and down the grooves etched out of the stone with some sort of tool. “Jeez. I forgot this one was here. Every time I see one of these it brings so much back to me.” His eyes stayed glazed over even as he looked back at me, but I soon realized he wasn’t  _ sad  _ exactly - there was another word for his expression I had trouble finding, though I knew that I knew it. 

“No one knows exactly, but…” Clancy began, beginning to fidget with his ring as he so often did, looking off to the side. “Trench, Banditos - they used to not exist, you know. There were always parameter escapes, sure, but that goes so far back that no one knows who they are anymore. If you look hard enough, there’s more of these in the same writing, from before Chrysanth even knows. For all we know, they could precede Bishops, even Dema, but I’m not so sure.”

Stunned into silence, I looked back at the words yet again. They seemed such a familiar cry, framing freedom as the only thing they needed but couldn’t find when all else they did have was less important - and in the same breath, declaring that it should cost nothing.

That someone from so very long ago could leave this behind for people they would never even see; that this message evoked such emotion in a person they would never meet as it had in Clancy, and myself, too… it instilled a burning feeling in my chest that I had no words for, the intensity building up until a few silent tears spilled from my eyes.

“Whoever they really were, we’ll never know,” Clancy murmured softly. “So we call them Vessel.”

“Vessel?” I echoed. I’d heard the word, of course, but it seemed somehow unusual as a name.

“Yeah, Vessel. Because they carried something to this place; something that has taken on such a huge meaning to so many people, but they vanished, like we all do someday. But the message they brought - what they held inside of them - is going to outlast all of us.” Swallowing, Clancy ran a hand through his hair, tangling his fingers in it. “Did they even know so many people would see this? Or was it entirely for themselves? All these questions that only they could ever answer, if they were still here.”

Pausing, Clancy looked sidelong at me as I involuntarily began to nod my head along with what he was saying. Eventually, he went on. “And, well, honestly, it was them - this concept of giving something to the world that’s still  _ yours _ , that only you can explain - that really made me want to create. Made me  _ need _ to create. If I could do this for someone else, even in the smallest way, if I’ve made anyone think or given anyone an answer, or even made their day the littlest bit brighter… All of this would be worth it for me, in the end.”

“Maybe it’s not the healthiest thing, but I still put most of my “purpose” into all this.” His voice turned weighted and fragmented as it so often did and he gestured back towards the wall of images we’d just passed. “I’m not exaggerating when I say to you that if I’d never found this thing that lets me say everything in my head that have no place in Dema or even in casual conversation out here, I really think it would have poisoned me. I don’t think I would be standing here talking - uh -  _ way  _ too much right now.” 

“...So. That’s what you can do, Elysia,” he added after an uncertain silence that left me admittedly a bit confused on why he had been so freely baring his soul to me since we’d started this little journey. 

“About the Tower, and about staying alive. You have to understand that there are things that only you hold that can never be replaced. I mean that. I’ve chosen to believe it about myself and everyone else, and I’m going to fight to keep that belief no matter where I go from here. Whatever purpose truly is, is for you to decide, but know that I truly believe that you do have one, and it’s  _ not  _ serving Lisben and rotting on that tower in that trap of a city. But that’s all I can tell you - now it’s up to you what you do with that. Okay, friend?”


	9. you need to try to think

My mind was so busy buzzing with swarms of disorganized thoughts that, in the end after Clancy backtracked to camp with me and then left once again to return to his projects, it felt like only a couple seconds had passed since I’d stood in front of one of Vessel’s writing, still trying to understand. With Clancy gone, departing after giving my shoulder a quick touch, it felt as though everything snapped back to the present and I began to sink.

It was a feeling that I needed to confront, a thought that I needed to confess and process, but instead I sat at the fire with a thread and needle to mend the knees of my jumpsuit, torn open from me falling onto them in the caves yesterday. 

Atlas returned to camp first, dusting snow off his shoulders and from his hair before sitting across from me and setting up a pot to boil water. I could tell he didn’t particularly want to talk, so I left him be until he poured himself a cup of coffee from the alien device he brewed it in and then held it out to me, an offering. I shook my head, wrinkling my nose, so he set it aside, blowing gently on the steam billowing over his cup and closing his eyes. If anything, he looked worse off than before.

I felt a strange stab of guilt suddenly, the more I thought about it. He concealed it remarkably, but the last twenty four hours were a reminder that Atlas was just as weighted, just as crippled by fear, as any Bandito ought to be, and then some. And it was more or less my fault that all these fears had come to a head. Throat burning, I half-watched as he drained his first cup and poured another, staring blankly into the low embers of the fire. 

“I’m really sorry, Atlas,” I whispered after preparing for more minutes than I bothered to count, and even so, my voice still shook.

It seemed like he took a few seconds to process that I’d spoken at all, but then he gave his head a cross shake, sighing heavily. “Look, Elysia, none of this is your fault. This type of thing has happened before and it’ll happen again. Lisben and his freaking guilt trips.” He added the final part of his reply with concentrated bitterness that surprised me, but the mention of my Bishop’s name in his voice brought back to me one of a million questions on my mind.

“Speaking of him - how does he know you? He called you by name, back at the old camp,” I blurted without thinking, leaning away as Atlas’ eyes focused in on me, almost cold.

“...How, aside from us being notorious criminals to a Bishop, you mean? I was born in his district." He started out with deadpan sarcasm, looking away as if to avoid seeing my reaction as the words hit me. “Not that I remember anything about him, or the people. According to my records, they moved me to Listo’s when I was four - then moved me again at twelve, then I wound up getting thrown in Sacarver’s district when I came of age. I guess no one really wanted me.”

I felt my heart ache a bit at the quiet, dejected words, but to my surprise Atlas shook his head, seeming to shed all the emotions in an instant. “I guess Lisben’s guilt must have stuck around in my DNA or something, though.” With a forced, scoffing laugh, he looked down into the paper cup in his hand. 

Not sure what to say to comfort him, or even if he wanted me to say anything at all, I only tilted my head, hoping that my sympathy made it over to him through my eyes.

“...Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that everything led me to here. I wouldn’t give this life up in exchange for anything, even if I had another plan. But I really thought I would be better at all this by now. A better friend, a better support…” Pausing, he shook his head and downed the last of his coffee, crushing the paper cup into a wad and throwing it onto the embers between us. “Better for Chrysanth,” he added, barely audible, and I knew that I visibly flinched.

“You know, my real name isn’t Atlas,” he announced after a few seconds, looking over at me. “I picked it from this myth I read about a guy who basically picked the wrong side in a war and had to hold up the sky forever as punishment. That pretty much tells you everything you’d ever need to know about me, huh?”

“What  _ is  _ your real name then?” I wondered, cringing as Atlas gave me a reproachful look. “Ah - sorry. Nevermind. That was rude. Er… is “Chrysanth,” Chrysanth’s real name?”

“Nope.” After a moment, Atlas’ attention shifted to the cave exit behind him, then back to me. “I wouldn’t mention that to him, though. It’s a way of separating ourselves even more from Dema, and I can’t speak for him, but for me it’s just a reminder that I don’t want. It's kind of funny that the Bishops went along with it, though I  _ guess _ it makes sense - they wanna vilify us to their people as much as we vilify them, so they feed into our... personas.”

Nodding in understanding, we fell into silence again, though he seemed at least slightly less troubled than before. Thinking back on it, I couldn’t remember a time where he had talked to me more in one sitting, and with every word I found myself growing fonder of him. 

Atlas shifted around the dying embers of the fire before him for a moment, then took a deep breath as if preparing for something.“So… Clancy. Did he have anything to say about the nightmare?” As he asked, he pulled at the bandanna around his neck as if it had suddenly grown too tight.

The moment the question was out in the air, I knew that there was no one in Trench, Dema, or otherwise who needed to be let into that quiet, radiant moment in the caves. It was mine, and no one else’s, and that was how it would remain.

“There are things that I can do,” I evaded, looking around for something to fidget with and picking up the empty device Atlas made coffee in, staring at the soggy grounds within. “Do you mind if we don’t talk about that right now?”

Atlas blinked once, surprised, but quickly nodded, watching as I pulled up the plunger on the contraption in my hands before reaching over to gently retrieve it from my hands. “Sorry. It took Gywn like a year to find me another French press after my last one broke.”

I nodded in understanding, then, searching my mind for something to change the topic to, I inevitably remembered Chrysanth, still out in the snow somewhere. “Did you manage to talk it out with Chrysanth?” I wondered, though unsure if it was an okay topic to change to.

Usually Atlas lightened at least somewhat at the mention of him, but instead he only shrugged, resting his elbow on his leg and his chin in his palm. “Honestly, winter sucks - the uh, season, not the person. I love Winter. But the season is horrible - I want way more space than this, and it’s way harder for Chrys to work on his plans. I can’t even go down to the forest until spring unless I wanted all my fingers to freeze off. It’s frustrating for all of us, eventually we run out of anything to talk about and just…”

“...sit in silence.” Taking a moment after his brief tangent to do just that, he tapped his fingertips rhythmically on the glass of the coffee press next to him. “Anyways, like I said before, we’ve been through this cycle before and it’s going to take a lot more than him being in a bad mood and bull-headed for him to get rid of me.”

As the words registered I half-expected to feel a prickle of jealousy that Chrysanth had somebody with such patience and devotion, but instead it made me feel warm, if a bit wistful. I knew their love was a hard-fought and hard-won one, with a lot that I would never understand beneath the surface - it wasn't something to envy, but to admire. Two people who undoubtedly hadn't had much longer to live if they’d stayed in Dema now surviving contently, though far from perfectly, in Trench…

“You two have pretty much exactly what I want,” I said without thinking about the response I would get, but Atlas responded with a bashful grin, ducking his head a little. Saddening almost immediately, I shook my head and peered over my shoulder towards the tunnels as if making sure no one was eavesdropping. “But… I can’t be that for Winter. I’m just too unsteady. I’m not… enough.”

A look of clueless panic crossed Atlas’ expression for a split second at the topic before he seemed to reign it under control, shaking his head and studying me for a second before looking away. “...Not that I’m in any position to be giving you love advice, but - Chrysanth and I are like, bros. He’s my best friend. I freakin’ love that guy just as a  _ person, _ and all that is way more important than…”

He paused a moment as if fishing for words, poking at the embers between us with the long stick used to rearrange it, then set it aside and looked back at me. “Like, we can’t constantly be together. We both want our space sometimes, and we can’t drop everything for one another, but he’s just so…” Instead of finishing his sentence he looked upwards to the cave ceiling as if in reverence and I involuntarily found myself smiling, nodding.

“And that’s all there is to it, really. No undying devotion, or any crap like that, we just love being together. He’s my partner, not my Bishop. Anything more than that wouldn’t be healthy for either of us. I don’t exactly have a Plan B, so the thought of losing him is still terrifying, but at the end of the day I do trust him more than anyone or anything. My fears can’t ever really go away, but I also know they won’t ever actually come to be. You know?”

Humbled and not really sure what I could possibly say in response to all that, I only nodded, staring into the fire with unfocused eyes. If anything, he had only made me more uncertain of myself, but I now realized that, perhaps, it wasn’t such a bad thing. I had never really called to question the things that he’d brought up - if, among all the people I’d met and may meet, if Winter was really material to be my “best friend,” my “Plan A.” 

What we had was forged in torch fire - hasty, scrambling, and impassioned. Whether or not it was worth working to perfect, something that I wanted to have for the rest of my life - these were things that I had not taken the time to consider, much less discuss with Winter, and I had been remiss to never recognize that.

“Thanks, Atlas,” I said finally, though quite some minutes had passed and he had probably stopped expecting a response. “That made me realize I have a lot to think about. Well - on top of the nightmare and... Literally everything else. But really, thank-you.”

“Don’t we all,” he mused simply in response. Sometimes it did seem to me that Atlas was the only one among us who had it all figured out, but I was beginning to see that nobody truly had all the answers. Not even Lisben.

Nightfall came faster than I expected, Chrysanth returning as the cave began to darken and the cold unquestionably forced him back, not saying anything to Atlas or I and instead crouching at the firepit to nurse it back to a full flame with experienced hands. Clancy returned next and, seeming to sense that the tension hadn’t yet passed, kept his distance from all of us, organizing the contents of his backpack before vanishing into his tent.

Anxiety began to grow up from my core as dusk completely overtook the sky outside and the edges of the cavern, reigning in full. I couldn’t seem to bring myself to bother either of my companions, knowing they were off in their own troubles with their own things to fret about and I knew if I really had any cause for alarm around Winter’s long absence, someone would have let on by now - right?

But the dark got deeper all around and after finding I couldn’t even eat dinner for the churning in my stomach, I finally broke my silence. “Are neither of you worried that Winter’s still out there somewhere?” I blurted to Atlas and Chrysanth without taking the time to consider how my words would sound.

Chrysanth looked up at me first, then gave Atlas a reproachful side-eye that was not secretive whatsoever from my angle before looking away again, seeming to have no intention to respond. He did glance over my shoulder at the tunnels in the distance, invisible in the darkness at the moment, though looking no more or less troubled than he already had.

“Well, honestly… no,” Atlas admitted after a long pause, voice softer and quieter than usual. “Actually, it’s not all that unusual. She used to spend even more time away, before you came along. It’s pretty normal when she has something on her mind - sometimes she’ll just stay down there all night.”

Disquieted, I looked off into the darkness behind me. “I couldn’t imagine just… wandering around in the dark  _ alone  _ for hours. I think it’d drive me crazy.”

Atlas hesitated a moment, glancing sidelong at Chrysanth as if giving him a second to interject if he wanted to, but the other man made no indication that he was listening at all, so Atlas shrugged. “Yeah, the thought kind of scares me too. But not everyone finds peace in the same things, y’know? And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Swallowing hard, I nodded and made another attempt at picking at my food before quietly reiterating to myself aloud, “so I don’t need to be worried.” It didn’t help - after everything, I doubted I would be able to calm myself until I saw for myself that she was okay and conjured up some apology to make sure all was well between us.

It was hard not to notice the dramatic eye roll Chrysanth replied with at my fretting, and I found myself flinching away from whatever he could potentially say. But whatever viterol I feared never came - some criticism for how one-sided my worries were, perhaps - and he held back whatever was waiting behind his teeth and inside his head. 

Instead we sat in silence.


	10. deciding where to fight and where to die

As Atlas had predicted, I saw hide nor hair of Winter that night, managing to catch very little sleep in between the sounds of stirs outside my tent, as every one jolted me awake to peer out in hopes that I would see her. I knew that it was foolish; wherever she was, she surely wasn’t losing sleep over me. But I couldn’t turn off the longing in my chest any more than I could turn off the thoughts racing through my mind, and it all coalesced into an anxiety-ridden, sleepless night that I couldn’t imagine myself surviving many more of.

I had no way to tell how much time had passed or how close dawn had drawn when it occurred to me that this was my first night spent alone and thoroughly awake in Trench. Yet in Dema, I had always had no one, and morning had always come anyways. That was no different now. Except that now I’d been handed an omen of death.

After my fourth or fifth time managing to doze off, I awoke to the sound of muted whispers by the fire and finally decided to abandon my hope for a few more winks of sleep, crawling out of my shelter to find Atlas and Chrysanth at the fire, heads leaned close together, both smiling fondly at one another. I wanted to retreat and avoid interrupting, but I had already been seen; Chrysanth seemed to immediately snap back to his usual stoicism, sitting up straight and nodding to me. 

Guiltily, I grabbed one of the blankets from my tent and trudged to the fireside, sitting down heavily and grabbing the stick to flip over a log needlessly, sending sparks flying into the air. I could feel Chrysanth watching me, but I couldn’t ascertain why even when he seemed to give up on his facade and tilted over, leaning his head on Atlas’ shoulder. Despite having lived with them for so long, I realized it was probably the most overt gesture of affection I’d seen Chrysanth dole out, and I pretended not to notice, prodding at the fire with the stick in my hand instead.

“She is gonna come back, you know,” Chrysanth said after minutes had passed, his voice strangely soft and sleepy. “There’s such a thing as thinking too much, and I think you kinda are. Sometimes you just gotta let things be.”

Hesitantly, I looked up from the fire to study him, feeling a strange resentment burning in me. It was unlike him to try to tell someone what to feel, even if it was with the best of intentions. It clicked with me only in that moment that, though Atlas and Clancy had both had the opportunity to at this point, neither of them had told him about my nightmare.

Chest aching, I set aside the stick in my hand and pulled my blanket taut around my shoulders. He looked so peaceful at the moment - could I really bring myself to destroy that? Clancy had told me that telling people what was plaguing me might be one of relatively few things that could help me survive, but I had to consider the collateral damage. But then, Atlas would surely eventually tell him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that, either.

Deciding to face the repercussions sooner rather than later, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, taking a moment inside my head to brace myself before blurting out the six simple words: “Chrysanth, I had the tower nightmare.” 

For a moment he only froze, blank-faced, then he sat upright, the contentment vanished from his expression as he quietly, defeatedly, uttered, “aw, no, not you.”

Admittedly, I was stunned. The response was so simple yet so weak; a surrender. It was far from what I had expected from Chrysanth, and I found myself, perhaps childishly, feeling only indignant.

“That’s  _ it _ ?” I burst out, though the last thing I wanted was to fight with him on top of everything that had already happened. To my surprise, though, he barely responded, leaving me to stew with my emotions before I finally shook my head, pulling the blanket up to my face to cover my mouth as I mumbled, “I thought you would have…  _ anything  _ to say.”

“I mean, you clearly already know what that means,” he pointed out, his voice taking on that odd inflection of his that I’d learned meant he was trying to sound hardened and steady when he was far from it, but a tremor was there, just barely concealed.

“No - I don’t!” I snapped, then grimaced, taking a moment to tone down my anger before I could find myself any more overrun. “Clancy had the nightmare, too - when you found about about him did you just roll over and accept that he - your  _ brother -  _ was going to march off and die?”

Chrysanth looked stunned for a moment, like he truly wasn't expecting the question, then a troubled expression took him over and he quietly muttered, “well… no. It was devastating to me at the time. But I don't buy into his “immunity,” either. I know him and I know Keons. His Bishop is playing the long game, and Clancy is just keeping a fire going that  _ will _ burn out eventually - it’s only a matter of time. You'll go, and he will, too. I just hope it's ten more years from now.”

Shocked to a point past having anything at all to say, I looked to Atlas in false hope that he would chime in with some words that could illuminate what the genuine  _ fuck  _ Chrysanth had just said. But at some point during the conversation he had leaned away from Chrysanth completely and pulled his bandanna up over his nose, refusing to look at either of us.

“That's… that's just- I-” I fumed without any actual thought in my words, my earlier restraint now completely forgotten. “Are you suddenly good at acting or are you really that calloused?” Despite not exactly intending to yell, when my voice bounced back to me from the cave walls it occurred to me that I definitely was.

Incensed, I stood up, letting the blanket around me flap to the ground and circling the fire to stand in front of Chrysanth, wide-stanced, demanding his attention. “What are you trying to do to me - Winter already abandoned me, and now you're trying to take away what little hope I have that I won't lose my life? Well, it won't work! You may be ready to just give up and accept it, but I'm not! This isn't your life to make decisions for!”

I realized that I'd gone rather far past the point of anger that a reasonable human being normally did, and I expected Chrysanth’s reprisal to be equally as outraged, but he barely batted an eye, going so far as to look inexplicably smug with himself. 

“I know, Elysia.” His voice wasn't severe at all when he spoke and he met my glare with uncharacteristic calmness. “We all know that you can make the decision to hurt yourself. We all know that you can march back to Dema at any time. That isn't news to anyone.”

The words felt like an electric shock that knocked all the rage out of me, and I flinched away from him.

“We all know that option exists. I'm not going to tell you that you're not going to die. I'm not going to tell you that I believe you can defy Lisben forever. What I did do and what I am doing is twisting that kaleidoscope behind your eyes, because you need to see a new view on your circumstances.”

“Wh…” I started, but didn't manage to form more than that singular sound before Chrysanth kept talking. 

“Clancy gave you a very different spiel, I know. And what he says is right, too - any way to keep you breathing is right. But sometimes literally all you have is defiance. Anger. Meaning, and the people who love you,  _ won't  _ always be there for you. Sometimes all you have is yourself and an enemy - those gravestones back in Dema will come calling when you have nothing to turn to, and you still have to defeat it. Do you hear me?”

For a fleeting second I had thought that I stopped recognizing Chrysanth, but now I realized he was still everything I had always known him to be and more as he led me into my own feelings in his own cunning way and dropped me in the middle of them. Now he watched, waiting to see if I could get my footing.

Of course, he was right. I was angry. I was defiant. I didn't  _ want _ to die. But until this moment I hadn't seen it as a strength, as something else that I could use. Something that could pull me through if all else failed.

“There are so many things you  _ can  _ do to stay alive,” Chrysanth continued, pausing as I tired of my meaningless hostility and sank to the ground before him. “And it’s kaleidoscopic, ever-changing. We can tell you whatever you want to hear - that you have a purpose-”

“And that we need you, and we love you,” Atlas cut in for the first time, and when I looked back over at him, his eyes were warm rather than blank as they had been minutes ago.

“-and that you can decide to deny the things that would put you on that tower. But it’s all up to you in the end.” When I made no response to Chrysanth's words at first, looking directly at him despite not really seeing him, he looked to Atlas briefly as if for assistance; Atlas only made a delicate gesture to wait, and so he did.

“I don’t know if I can,” I managed at last, looking down at the stone floor around me and trying to remember when exactly I had knelt down. 

“You did it up until now, didn’t you?” Chrysanth offered me yet another simple answer in a hard shell, and I could feel myself coming back to my senses, ashamed that I’d believed for even a second that he didn’t care.

“That’s just it,” I muttered, feeling the frozen sensation beginning to loosen its grip on my joints. Sitting back, I tucked my knees to my chest and rested my chin on one knee, feeling the sensation of the frayed fabric sewn back together against my skin. “I was fine before Trench. Before all this, I was… _fine. _Really. But that was only because I didn’t know any of this - these feelings, these problems - existed. Does that… make any sense?”

“Ignorance is bliss,” Atlas spoke up once again, reaching across Chrysanth to offer me a hand to help me to my feet. Grateful for the help, as I was feeling rather drained from my outburst, I took his hand and used it to pull myself up, making my way back to where I’d dropped my blanket and picking it up, draping it over my shoulders like a cape. 

“I… I need some space,” I muttered to both of them and, rather than sitting back down at the fire I headed back into my tent, though I was unsure whether it was to face the questions or embrace the silence.


	11. cold nights under siege from accusations

The deep cold of winter crept quietly in on our shelter from it all as days went by, encroaching with foreboding frost coating the rocks at the edges of our little alcove. It was kept at bay by a fire that was now never allowed to completely go out, though the heat couldn’t drive the icy sheen from the cave walls even at a full roar. One night I awoke with teeth chattering to find Clancy quietly erecting an array of dusty, once-yellow tarps at the perimeter of our tents, presumably to reflect heat back inwards, his face grim. 

When he saw that he’d awoken me he softly said to me, “I think this is going to be a bad one,” then continued his work, circling our camp once in full, hands out to feel the air for notable drafts.

He meant the weather, of course, but there was a tiredness about him that forewarned of a deeper truth, and I swore I sensed it in Chrysanth and Atlas, too. By now the trio each knew about my nightmare, but it seemed they hadn’t told Winter in the brief moments we saw her, and she never seemed to catch on that Atlas and Clancy were treating me differently. And, I supposed, how would she, given that she barely stuck around to offer more than a few words to any of us?

Despite the cold, I found myself wandering as far from the hole I presently called home as I could most days, either roaming the snow-covered stone above ground or the cold-gripped caves below. It offered a good combination of clearing my head and helping me think, both things that were of greater value to me now than they had ever been. Mostly, though, I felt like I had hit a wall, all the things that came up simply repeats, endlessly on loop:

Purpose, love, life, death. I felt I had all the pieces, but no matter how I tried to arrange them, I couldn’t find how I fit into it all. Maybe I never would. Maybe I didn’t belong. Maybe I was still missing some pieces - or maybe there were no concrete answers for me, and I was supposed to come to terms with it. The only way to find out was to carry on.

I’d lost track of the exact count of the days of monotony by the time they were broken by the arrival of Gwyn rather without warning, and this time I managed to avoid the reflex of being overly happy to see her after so long like I had been with Clancy - if anything, I knew her even less than I’d known him.

I knew I had overslept when I crawled out of my tent and saw her by the fire in the first place, but still I sensed a moment of intense confusion about her when she saw me. I supposed she had thought the camp was empty, thinking Winter had been staying in the tent alone and had already left. For a moment I thought she didn’t recognize me at all until she quietly uttered, “oh,  _ wow _ , you’re still here.”

Though certain there was an explanation for her reaction, I didn’t bother asking, instead looking around for another soul at our camp. “Clancy’s probably…” I began, pointing off towards the tunnels behind me, but she cut me off.

“Yeah, I  _ think _ I could guess where he is. He is my husband, you know.” 

Flinching, and knowing that I had done poorly to hide it, I nodded my head, muttering an apology despite the fact that her condescension had stung me a bit. I started to retreat back to my tent, not wanting to deal with the tension brought up, but she called after me, reluctantly. 

“I’m sorry, too. I… I don’t suppose you know where the other two are?”

Stopping, I looked back over at where she stood by the dying fire, cradling her arm with the other hand, looking rather concerned. Hesitantly, I made my way back to the fire and knelt by it, piling on a few decent-sized branches that would keep it burning for some time. It wasn’t like either of them to leave the fire completely unattended; but I hadn’t been around to know who was to blame, or why they’d left. I supposed I was probably to blame for still being asleep.

With this done, I stood and meandered to the entranceway of the cave, looking out. “I’m sure they didn’t go far - they’ll be back soon,” I answered at last, though I actually wasn’t all that sure. Then, without waiting for her answer, I backtracked through camp, grabbing a jacket to keep me warm and a torch, lighting it before I descended into the dark tunnels for what had become a daily pacing and rumination. 

I purposely avoided the cavern that Clancy was likely slaving over his latest painting in, taking a long roundabout route back to camp instead, surprised to find that when I returned Gwyn was still there, as if she always had been, natural as could be.

And, I supposed she belonged more than I did, despite the literal distance she maintained from the location of Trench. She had time, experience, and a role here that I couldn’t boast, and I knew I had no reason to feel confrontational. 

I’d managed to beat Chrysanth and Atlas back to camp someow, but Winter had returned at some point and was sitting with Clancy and Gywn at the fire, looking content as she caught up with a friend she’d known much longer than she’d known me. 

Part of me was reluctant to join them at all, but even my brief trip through the frozen caves had left me chilled through, and so I approached the trio at the fire, if only to chase out the cold. Clancy offered me a soft “hey” of greeting and Winter nodded to me, but the conversation went mostly undisturbed. I half-listened in out of a lack of anything better to focus on. 

It was mostly back-and-forth between Gwyn and Winter as they passed on news from the last couple months of events, using the names of many Banditos I’d never heard of, both inside and outside of Dema. It seemed like a lot of business talk at first, but before long they slipped into more idle chatter, easy and carefree. Clancy mostly listened as well, and I realized that due to his seemingly self-imposed isolation, most of what he was hearing was news to him, too.

When Chrysanth appeared from the tunnels with a few books, Atlas in tow carrying a load of firewood, things went silent for a moment, the lapse in conversation lasting until the other couple had settled in with the rest of us. The mood around the fire took a swift turn, though, as Gwyn turned her attention to Chrysanth immediately.

“You’re going to have to get  _ really _ creative next time, you know, Chrys.” All the humor and lightheartedness about her previously was left forgotten now. When Chrysanth didn’t even make eye contact in response, she redirected her attention to Atlas. “You know, everyone is saying it’s as bad as the year of the riot in their districts. Doubled or tripled watchers, even in chapel services, and the gates between districts are under constant watch - official Dema business only.”

“We knew kidnapping and impersonating a Bishop was going to attract a lot of attention,” Chrysanth pointed out flatly, though his eyes were still focused on the distance behind me. “That was kind of the point.”

I felt my stomach twist uncomfortably as it occurred to me that they were talking about the stunt Chrysanth had pulled at the Assemblage - the very one that had led me to Trench in the first place. Before now I hadn’t stopped to think about the aftereffects the plot must have had in Dema but it certainly couldn’t be pretty. 

“All I’m saying is maybe you should lay low for a little while, let things-” Gywn pressed on.

“We’ve all been laying low long enough!” Chrysanth seethed, interrupting her. “Now is the time to keep pushing, not sl-”

“You need to think about how that affects your kind, not just your enemies!” Gywn raised her voice over his steadfastly, and Chrysanth lapsed, then tipped his head back, laughing bitterly and darkly to the cave ceiling.

“My kind,” he repeated to himself. An uncomfortable silence hung around the fire now, particularly over Atlas and Clancy as their loved ones butted heads. 

Of course, I knew that not everyone would agree with Chrysanth’s extreme views, methods, and personality, but I hadn’t expected to find him so at odds with Gwyn of all people with only a small handful of words exchanged. 

“You have to know when to quit, Chrys,” Gywn sighed after letting the anger between them dissipate over a few moments.

“I know when to quit. Never.”

“Of course you’d say that.” Pausing for a moment, Gywn looked away from Chrysanth and to Clancy, looking exceptionally drained before shaking her head and continuing to push forward. “You better make it count. Things aren’t the way they used to be, when it seemed like nothing we said broke through. Ever since you busted into Dema to break Clancy out… which you  _ know  _ I’m thankful for still, now, today… Everyone’s eyes are on you, and you know that. Everyone  _ is _ listening now. You can’t ignore that pressure forever.”

Chrysanth stared across the fire at Gwyn with an intensity that I didn’t think anyone would be able to match, and yet she did, and I abruptly realized that they didn’t  _ hate _ one another at all. A certain understanding seemed to hover in a delicate balance between them, and though I had already seen that they could become volatile, there was an equilibrium they quickly reached with no need for anyone to intervene.

“So, what’cha gonna do, Chrys?” Gywn pressed yet again, her voice sarcastically chipper. 

Sighing, he shook his head wearily and glanced towards Atlas. “I’m… going to think about it, obviously. I thought maybe it was time for the big one, but… how are things in Lisben’s?”

At the question, every set of eyes around the fire collectively turned on me for a brief second before turning to Gwyn expectantly. I wasn't emotionally prepared to hear of the aftermath in my district, but I found myself even more dismayed when Gwyn only pursed her lips, then shook her head.

“I'm sorry, Chrys, but… there’s no change. They're closed off tighter than ever, and now there's extra watchers about, too. Nico will never allow something like that to happen ever again.” Taking a moment to sigh wearily, Gwyn sat up straighter, glancing sidelong at me with an arched eyebrow. “Though I could think of someone able to get in there and spread this fire off the top of my head.”

My heart plummeted straight down into my stomach at the mere implication. After my numerous months in Trench fighting for my right to exist here, the suggestion that I return on  _ purpose _ … My mind screamed that it was wrong, all wrong. But to return to aid the Banditos, to save even just one life that would be forfeit in Dema… For the part of me that desperately scrabbled towards purpose, it was the first sign of light I had seen in a very long time. However…

“Gwyn, that would be suicide.” To my surprise it was Clancy who jumped to defend me first, taking Gwyn’s hand and rubbing his thumb across it gingerly. “Lisben knows where she's been and who she's been with… he would smear her, and it's an enormous gamble on her life - whether or not she could bounce back from that.”

“She wouldn't be the first person to risk it all like that,” Gwyn pointed out softly, reaching up and putting her palm against Clancy’s neck, gently. “You of all people know that.”

There were a hundred thousand unspoken stories between them for a second and no one seemed to be able to interrupt until Clancy reached up to draw her other hand away from his neck, kissing the back of it before enclosing her hand in his and closing his eyes, letting out a long breath.

“Look, Gwyn, you're always talking about damage control, and the message I send,” Chrysanth cut in once the moment had mostly passed, “and she can't do this. She-”

“Chrysanth,” Atlas warned.

But he paid no mind, repeating the unthinkable truth that I was still trying to forget, or deny: “she dreamt she fell from the Tower of Silence, and you know what that means. You know in any other situation, I would agree with you - it would be a calculated risk, just the kind of thing I'd do. But there's a clear right and wrong choice here, and I won't condone the wrong one for the sake of _ maybe _ making things easier for the rest of us.”

“So - Elysia's not an option. I'm not going to knowingly send anyone to their death, especially not her, especially not for something that may not even be a success.”

Silence reigned around the fire for longer still now and Gwyn slowly nodded, then finally turned her attention to me, expression serious. “I'm sorry. I didn't know.” Her apology was simple and a bit flat, but the guilty glimmer in her eyes seemed to promise she meant it, so I just shook my head, beginning to voice my forgiveness, but Winter spoke first.

“Yeah - I didn't either. When were any of you planning on telling  _ me _ ?” 

I felt my muscles lock up at the broken yet accusatory tone she managed, and I found myself looking across the fire at Chrysanth, looking for a signal that he was sorry for letting the truth slip out. But he was only looking steadily across at me, the fire reflecting in his unreadable eyes.

“That was the morning you got upset with me for still being loyal to Lisben,” I mumbled absently, involuntarily flinching when Winter reached towards me. “There was never a good time to tell you. I was waiting for a better time. But I guess I would've died waiting, because there's never a good time for something like that."

“You could have told me any time. You can always tell me anything,” Winter insisted, her voice low as if she intended to be private, but we were far too close in proximity to the others for them to miss it. “There is no  _ wrong  _ or  _ bad _ time for you to talk to me, Elysia,” she continued when I didn't respond, staring stiffly straight ahead.

There was something about this situation that I simply couldn't take and I stood up abruptly, my legs moving on their own accord to bring me to the refuge of my tent without so much as a word. Just before I ducked in, the sight of Winter frozen where she was, still leaning closer to where I had sat seconds ago, looking hurt and confused, caught the corner of my eye despite my best efforts not to see it. Trying to shake it off, I tucked myself away in the dark shelter, throwing a worn pillow over my head to block out their conversation that followed.

All I really wanted to do was close my eyes and welcome sleep, but it was cold without her. 


End file.
